


Naga

by KhamanV



Category: Agent Pendergast Series - Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
Genre: Gen, cambodia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-11
Updated: 2013-09-11
Packaged: 2017-12-26 07:24:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 30
Words: 37,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/963198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KhamanV/pseuds/KhamanV
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cambodia is still haunted by years under the brutal Khmer Rouge regime, accepting everyday crimes and ghosts under every porch as the price for each new hopeful morning. When horror and fear begins to entwine the US Embassy with the country's tortured past, Agent Pendergast is ordered against his wishes to investigate. But in the Kingdom of the Snake, only the deadliest can survive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One: Apsara

NAGA

_It is difficulties that show what men are ~ Epictetus_

PART ONE:

APSARA

1.

The aged but well-maintained Land Rover Defender handled the unmaintained roads on the outskirts of Phnom Penh with ease, its bored active-duty Army driver so used to the dips and turns of the flattened dirt that he could navigate it half-dead or half-drunk. He was neither, however his passenger, a fellow Army brat, would confess to a couple of beers if asked. It would still be a few beers worth of a lie. They joked as the road bounced beneath them, escalating vulgarities that included deep and insightful questions about each other's sexuality. In the back seat, a third young man slept. The worst of his wet, malaria-recovery snores punctuated the conversation, causing the occasional snigger at his expense.

"Don't laugh too hard at him, he did pay for your beers." The driver flicked a glance towards the passenger seat, a wry smile on his face.

"I am a fuckin' mooch, I know it, man." A wet hiccup. "How many did I have?"

"I don't know, Jackson, I didn't keep track."

"Ah, fuck it. I'll drop him a five later after we get back to the embassy; what'd he pay, local dolla?" The driver nodded in response. "Shit, I should be having my liver replaced at that exchange rate." Jackson drooped his head and burped hugely into his lap. The driver began to laugh hard. "Man, I think I had a revisitation there."

"Swallow it back down, buddy." The start of another laugh, then, "Oh shit!"

. . .

The Rover pulled to a complete stop, sliding only barely under the capable reflexes of the driver. The highbeams switched on, bathing the large and arcing roots of a banyan tree just off the road in sharp bright white.

"The fuck is that?" The driver slapped his buddy on the arm with his right hand. His left already held his sidearm. "Sober up and check that."

Jackson blinked twice and leaned forward, peering out the bullet-resistant window. His hand sat on his own pistol and his vision swam. He shook his head hard, adrenaline clearing up the worst of the alcoholic fog, glanced into the back seat. The third man was still out cold. "Got it." He popped the door and slid out, only a little woozy for the wear, considering. He pulled his weapon and checked the territory around him. No sound except for the ticking engine of the car. Nothing nudged his senses.

He slammed the door of the Rover shut and approached the banyan tree, his pistol down and ready. A few steps made clear what the driver thought he'd seen – a foreign woman leaning back hard against the tree. "Ma'am?" he called out cautiously. No response. Blonde hair spilled along the tree, occasionally dark ginger at the roots of the scalp. An arm was raised high, he couldn't yet see the other. He paused. No, his first impression wasn't right. The scalp was sticky, dull in the lights from the vehicle. A rope laid along the wrist, pale against the pale tree, against the pale, bloodless skin. Jackson rose his head again to search his surroundings. Still dead silence. A tickle began to form at the back of his neck regardless; his instincts saying he didn't want to see more.

He pursed his lips and moved forward carefully anyway, bringing her into full view. "Aw. Aw, holy shit. Fuck me." He turned his head, racked his brain to be sure he had the embassy's missing person's notice correct. "Call in! We found Bellani."

"She breathing?"

"I don't know how the fuck she would be, man." He turned back to look at the body, contorted and tied fast to the tree in a way he almost recognized. He didn't feel the least bit drunk anymore.

Staring out from Bellani's open belly, Jackson met the smiling eyes of a grey stone Buddha.


	2. Chapter 2

2.

Traffic ebbed and flowed along the asphalt road in front of the US Embassy of Phnom Penh, though mostly flowed in the early hour. Buses, motos and their _tuktuk_ – the ubiquitous passenger carts attached to many of the motorbikes - thronged and knotted, filling the air with squawks and harsh yells to clear the street, then would just as mysteriously dissipate a second later leaving only dry dust in the humid air. The occasional Western car plugged up the liquid traffic, often turning into the well-guarded black and white front gate of the embassy.

Pedestrians were far fewer, most of the locals skipping the concrete walkways alongside the imposing black steel fence, though saffron-wrapped monks and pale tourists could be seen filling the gardens across the street. To the east, Wat Phnom's grand pagoda towered over the city, gleaming bright in the clear morning sky. Few looked up, even among the tourists.

The smell of jasmine drifted from the gardens, challenging the diesel reek of the street and too often losing. Another throng piled up, a chaotic morass of motos challenging a tour bus to clear the territory, then piling around a small series of little black taxis. And then again, the fading hum of the vehicular crowd.

This time, the sea of metal left something changed. A tall, slender figure stood on the concrete path in front of the embassy, his dead black suit like a line of broken pixels contrasted against the white stone of his surroundings. He was still, not a single trace of movement, though his head was turned to the east. Pale eyes in a pale face took in the distant spire of the pagoda, then half-closed as if to consider. His expression remained unreadable and impassive, even as he finally moved to approach the security gate.

. . .

The embassy guard was stocky and no nonsense, his eyes hidden behind tactical sunglasses and his camo-uniformed body tucked well inside the gatehouse. The thin black FBI wallet and badge stayed firmly grasped in his hand while he made sure the name on it matched his daily entrance list. The head tilted now and again, matching the face and photo, while the lips drew into a thin line. "Information matches. You're expected." He did not sound particularly satisfied with the conclusion.

"Thank you," came the cool drawl. "May I have that back, please?"

The guard didn't budge. "Security car comes direct from the airport, you got dropped in a civ taxi. Mind explaining that, sir?"

"I'm quite sure that's unnecessary."

The guard set the badge down and leaned towards the tall figure. "Unnecessary or not, we're on heightened security and it's my job to ask the questions." He tilted his face down to the badge and then up again. "I respect that once you're verified with the bosses you get to ask all the questions you want, Agent Pendergast. Until then, I get to ask mine. Sir."

There was a long quiet as the two men regarded each other, equally unreadable. Finally, Pendergast tilted his head slightly in acknowledgement of something unsaid. "I wished to take a scenic route and arrange my hotel. On my terms. Nothing more. I will leave my hotel information within, as protocol demands, of course."

"Scenic route. Been to Cambodia before?" The guard reached up and pulled the shades down an inch to examine the man with his own eyes.

Pendergast smiled very thinly, the expression not reaching the rest of his face. "Once."

The guard pushed the shades back up, scooped up the wallet and handed it over to the agent. "Welcome back."


	3. Chapter 3

3.

Thelonius R. Jameson, better known as 'Ed' to his friends and former squadmates, moved up the halls of the embassy's secure inner offices with the casual, unmistakably aggressive march of a tiger. His physical presence wasn't necessarily imposing; at five foot eight he marked average, and his build was muscular without being chunky. But he _seemed_ immense, no less helped along by blazing light brown eyes and white teeth in a dark brown face. As top man for embassy security and a good friend of both the ambassador and her military attache, he ran a tightly controlled ship and that left him in a perpetually touchy condition. He passed a string of offices, each of them helmed by someone lost in their own world, catching the glance of his secretary trying to flag him down from down a T-junction. "He here?"

"Security just passed him. He should be in your office shortly."

Ed snorted. "He's already there."

. . .

Ed opened the door of his office and glanced down at the back of the sleek, white-blond head. "Grew your hair out, Sergeant."

"Agent," came the correction, in a mild, slowly drawling voice. The head tilted slightly to the right, not quite regarding the security chief. "It's been quite a long time, Thelonius."

"Twenty years and some serious bonus time. Probably still not quite long enough." Ed smiled mirthlessly for his own benefit, then shut the door and came around to sit behind his plain metal desk. He took a moment to examine the agent, noting with some private interest how little the man seemed to have aged. "How's your sense of humor?"

"The same." Pale blue eyes searched his face. If the agent found anything of interest there, the discovery went unremarked. "Yourself?"

"Perpetually pissed off about something, but I can always find a joke in it."

"Ah. The same as well." A faint, mechanical smile. Slender hands came up to interlace before his chest.

"And I suppose we can now dispense with the rest of the social bullshit and get on with business." Ed leaned back, waiting for it.

The eyes went half-lidded and the voice was crisp. "I recognize that the Bureau has jurisdiction over US embassies with the full faith and assistance of local authorities, yet I fail to entirely grasp why I am in particular called. Rather, all but _ordered_."

"We have multiple dead people. I'm well informed you specialize in that." Ed clasped his own hands together and dropped them heavily in his lap, unmoved by the faint undercurrent of annoyance.

"I _choose_ my investigations, based on my particular abilities and interests. I don't care much for demands, _Warrant Officer_ Jameson."

Ed arched a thick black eyebrow. "I stick with Chief now. And in my role as head of security, I can tell you that what we have on our hands is virtually fucking _tailored_ to your abilities and interests." He raised a hand as Pendergast leaned forward. "Let me finish. I know you're not well-liked back home. I don't much give a shit right now. I'll happily run interference. This one has to stop as soon as humanly fucking possible, because I'm pretty sure that what's going on has been going on a very long fucking time." He dropped his hand, palm down, onto the top of his desk with a smack, then pulled it back towards him. He pulled open a drawer and took the top file out, flopping it onto the desk and opening the top cover. "I don't have proof. I just have memories and a hunch." He gestured towards the top photograph.

Pale blue eyes stared across the desk at him, ignoring the file, and the voice was glacially cold. "You weren't there. Do not presume to evoke _memory_ to gain my willing help."

Ed stared evenly back. "I listened, Sergeant. I have the records. And I have this on my hands." He tapped a finger on the color image.

After a long, long minute, Pendergast's eyes finally let him go and dropped their gaze to the top photo. He reached out and fanned the rest. A pale brow arched slightly. "Three. Timeframes?"

"Patrol boys coming back from a night out found Ms. Bellani two nights ago. That's when I called for cavalry." Ed watched Pendergast lean back, moving each photograph out to examine it carefully. "Bellani was the ambassador's top aide. We found Miss Ziesenhenne nine days prior – tourist. Ehlers was found six days before that."

"Tourist as well?"

Ed shook his head. "English teacher volunteering in the city. Boyfriend called the embassy and named her missing two months ago. Ziesenhenne disappeared about three weeks later. Bellani's been only missing a week."

"You think there's more amongst the locals."

Ed ran a hand through short-shaved black hair. "It's a hunch. We're accounted for otherwise both in-house and for visiting. So yeah, if it's been going on for a while, it'll be cutting through local. No major calls for missing, though. No calls for something weird getting found. That wouldn't be unusual, however." He cleared his throat, the sound underlining unsaid local problems. "I've got a guy at the nearby hospital who's been keeping an eye out for similar things. I'll give you the name, maybe he knows more than he thinks. Ordinary city life keeps him busy enough, though."

Agent Pendergast leaned back, impassive. "The discovery scenes?"

"As untouched as I can make them." Ed gave a dry, sardonic smile. "The photographs are your best coverage. We got every angle we could, full photo sets are with each main file." He knocked a knuckle against the desk drawer. "I'll send you out of here with copies of everything."

"And the bodies?"

"We had to send Ehlers home; family was screaming bloody murder, pun not exactly intended. Full documentation, autopsy, we took film. Ziesenhenne is still on ice and Bellani's waiting. She's in the same state as when we took her down from the tree. Moved as little as possible, even the pose."

"You recognize it, of course." The gaze flicked from the photograph to Ed and back.

He nodded. "The dancers. The _apsara_ dancers."

"Servants in the palaces of gods; the graceful and immortal nymphs." Pendergast gently placed the photographs back into their manila keeping, apparently coming to some sort of conclusion. "Very well, Chief Jameson. I should like to see them immediately."


	4. Chapter 4

4.

The embassy and its security team kept and used its own staff wherever possible. Medical facilities came both from a nearby hospital and in-house doctors. The medical examiner on hand was a young woman from Arizona, attached to the embassy for a three year tour who volunteered offsite four times a week. She nodded brusquely to Chief Jameson and his tall companion, saying little in greeting otherwise.

"German girl is getting rough, I don't recommend keeping her out long. Not much to see. We've done the report, mostly just waiting for her to get claimed." She glanced up and jutted out her chin. "Request is still hung up between us and home. Also, despite the fact that I just called her 'German girl,' she's definitely our people. I just can't pronounce her name, poor kid." The ME sighed and opened the cold vault, pulling the bagged body out onto a cart and unzipped it. She stepped back and glanced at the FBI agent. "All yours."

"Thank you." A white latex glove finished snapping into place. "Please get the other for me, if you would."

She shrugged. "Will do. Just take me a moment here."

. . .

Ed Jameson watched Pendergast examine the abdominal incision with one careful finger. "Contents were moved, obviously," came the soft murmur. "Where are they?"

The ME called over from the other side of the cold storage, her hearing excellent in the cold air. "We put together an ad hoc evidence locker for the stuff."

Ed nodded. "Next room. We'll have it spread out for you." He glanced up and gestured to the ME. "Can you do that for me right after you're done there?"

"Sure thing, boss." The woman shrugged with no sarcasm, clearly happy to have something more to do.

Agent Pendergast lifted his head to regard her. "A question." He gestured down at the still slightly-spread abdomen. "The cavity was this clean when you began your examination?"

"Squeaky." The examiner settled the second body bag into position and snapped off her left glove with a flourish. "Inner ribcage looks rinsed. All soft stuff taken, no sign of it at the scene. You can see down into the hip area, it's like the world's nastiest empty ice cream freezer case. They took out everything they could from upper chest through the uterus when they were done with her, cleaned it, and jammed it up with their goodies, same as the rest. Honest to God, they did such a good job, it almost stops being gross." She looked up at Ed. "Almost."

"You tossed your cookies at the scene, doc."

"Nearly fucking everyone did, boss." She shrugged. "No shame in that."

"None whatsoever," came an unexpected, soft murmur. Pendergast gently pushed the sides of the incision back together. "I should like to see Miss Ziesenhenne's ancillary artifacts before continuing." He looked up. "Shall we, then?"

. . .

The ME double-checked the list and the table, ensuring that everything matched. Agent Pendergast circled the table twice, looking over the items carefully without touching.

"Two stone Buddha statues, four different torn sheets, all white, little staining from blood and semen, but it's there. Five pieces of crumpled paper, and the three strips of tattooed skin." She checked off the last.

"The cloth nested, the paper and skin entwined within, and the statues? How were they found?"

"You'll see on Ms. Bellani. One centered facing out. The smaller one was nestled lower down, facing the very lower back. We haven't opened her up, but the pressure in the body indicates similar findings."

The agent frowned. Ed gave him a look. "That suggest something to you?"

"It does, but nothing I'm willing to commit specifically to as yet." He reached out and examined the three strips of skin. _"Yantra."_

Ed nodded. "Lots of kids with the fancy tats. We saw 'em back then, they still go on today, though not many go the traditional route anymore and call the priests to do it. Lot of cheap tattoo shops now. I think Angelina Jolie's got one of those things."

Pendergast looked up blankly, then back down at the tattooed strips of skin. "Marks of protection, of victory..." He arched an eyebrow. "They didn't work. Something more powerful was called on, though perhaps we cannot be sure what." He sighed and pushed himself away from the table, then glanced back down at the papers. Dark black Khmer calligraphy marked each one. "Have these been translated?"

The ME shook her head. "It's old dialect, cultural guy thinks pre-Angkorian. Nobody local on our dime knows it."

Pendergast pursed his lips. "Nor I, of course. Very well. It's time for poor Ms. Bellani."


	5. Chapter 5

5.

High above the streets of Phnom Penh, centered inside the living room of an elegant suite of the Hotel le Royal, sat a crystal-topped table covered with files and photographs of the recently dead and the newly autopsied. Near at hand was a finely carved decanter of cognac, utterly ignored amidst the sea of information.

Agent Pendergast sat outside on a low, cushioned and backless seat, his hands clasped neatly before him and his elbows resting on his knees. He still wore his black suit; the only nod to the oppressive heat and humidity of Cambodia was a few disregarded beads of sweat on his brow. He watched the congested traffic of the city over the edge of the low balcony rail, eyes flickering along the horizon from gaudy, glittering places that spoke of Cambodia's promises, to the poor hovels and dirt-coated streets that could never quite be hidden. In each glance, multiple facets of the country's personality could be glimpsed. A street merchant carried a dozen dead chickens slung over his shoulder within an arm's reach of a rich man's absurdly clean car. Thin women with dead faces and clothing too loose walking behind a shorter man who chivvied at them from over his shoulder. Jammed into the same stretch of sidewalk were oblivious tourists, serene Buddhist monks, and an enthusiastically shouting young man who claimed to be a _kru_ , there to tell fortunes and pass protections onto anyone that would give him a few _riel_ , or even better, an American dollar.

Pendergast allowed himself a long moment of unease in a city which he had never before seen with his own eyes, in a country he felt he knew too well. He closed his eyes and examined the biases he had come back to the country with; assessed them as carefully and remotely as he felt capable of, and set them aside with no small effort, to make room for the work he needed to do. It would not help, particularly in this, to allow the past to interfere with the present.

When at last he opened his eyes again, he went inside and poured a small glass of the fine cognac with a steady hand, sitting down once again to look over the files.

The autopsy of Ms. Bellani told him little that the previous autopsy reports hadn't covered. It was another thing entirely, however, to watch the swaddled statues and other horribilia be lifted cleanly from the empty chest and abdominal cavities.

White sheets of fabric had lifted nearly straight out, with only a scant trace of seminal fluid and blood staining near the lower back of the mass. DNA testing of the stains would be useless in Cambodia, unfortunately, but an order had been sent out anyway. As expected, the second, smaller statue of the Buddha had been pressed into the lower back, close to the tailbone. Another set of paper strips in ancient script, more scraps of tattooed flesh, and the larger, smiling Buddha in the center of the abdomen, looking out from the empty ruin of Bellani's abdomen.

 _Chakras_ , had been his first thought there in the medical examiner's office, and he left it in a mental file of possibility. Another artifact of the huge melting pot of belief and superstition that made up Cambodia's spiritual self.

Meanwhile, any thought of the small Buddha statues being a viable lead had been tossed aside the moment he had laid eyes on them. He'd seen a dozen stalls or more calling to tourists along the streets of the city as he'd arrived, each of them full of exact replicas of both the Buddhas in cheap, fake marble or other rubbish stone.

He shook his head and set the pictures of the day's autopsy aside, sipping thoughtfully at his drink and leaning back against a cool stone wall. Later, after a quiet dinner he still felt no appetite for, he would have an appointment at a nearby hospital, to see what Chief Jameson's doctor friend might have to add. Agent Pendergast held few hopes for real information – but the man would know the area beyond the embassy. That, he felt, was where he needed to start.


	6. Chapter 6

6.

The small building that housed a women's clinic was less than a kilometer away from the lush, clean spaces around the fortified embassy, but in the light of a new day, it seemed surrounded by an entirely different city. The roads around it were filled with dry, diesel-musky dust and trash lined sides of many of the buildings and homes, most of which were made of corrugated metal or decaying brick that kept hot in the sharp morning light. The smells here held no jasmine or rich jungle fruit; just rotting meat and scorching metal. Small children watched for target pockets with quick fingers, but gave up on the tall, pale foreigner - _barang_ , they called him, a slightly disparaging remark that meant 'French,' another holdover from its colonial past – very fast.

The clinic was one of just under a dozen such places in the capital, run by the Cambodian Women's Crisis Center and continually working through a day to day struggle just to keep the doors open. The front desk was staffed by a tiny Cambodian woman with sharp, quick dark eyes peeking out from a scarf wrapped loose around her face, who constantly kept one hand out of sight. She allowed the FBI agent in with a look of deep suspicion, but the badge and letters of introduction from both the embassy and Jameson's doctor friend allowed him the chance to go mostly where he liked.

On the second floor was the boss's office and he found it easily – the name on the door in both English and flowing Khmer script read _Ketmoni Tep_ and he let himself in through the unlocked door.

. . .

Tep was tall for an aging Khmer woman, and her angry, low and variously accented voice on the phone belied at least a brief childhood in the United States. She glanced up at Agent Pendergast, taking in the heavy black suit and the impassive face with a look of interrupted annoyance on her own and returned to her conversation. A lyrical mix of French, English, and Khmer language poured from her, while scarred, nut-brown fingers tugged forgetfully at a knot of grey hair mixed with black. After several minutes of irritated meandering back and forth, she hung up on whoever she had been talking with and leaned back in the chair.

"I have been told that the Khmer people are kindly, and even in the face of great troubles, can be counted on to smile." The tall figure inclined his head politely, the words spoken in a slow, amiable drawl. "I apologize, clearly I have come at a bad time."

Tep grunted, a sharp, low sound. She looked at his pale face and near-white hair, unmoved by the gambit of easy charm. "There's a one in four chance you're in the wrong building, _barang_." Her English was clear and clipped with only the barest trace of Khmer accent.

Pendergast arched a single eyebrow, visibly unoffended at being dismissed as just some Westerner. "I'll accept and avert that chance. I've made myself aware of the statistics of your business."

"Whatever you think they are, they're out of date and probably worse. I appreciate your attempt to be nice-" her voice did not match the sentiment. "But I've got four appointments coming up; women that need me way more than you do, whoever you are."

Wordlessly, he reached into his suit jacked and pulled his badge. She leaned forward to inspect it. "The American women who got killed, right? We had copies of both the missing persons reports and some information about what happened. Two of them?"

"Three. The third was found just a couple days ago."

She rubbed a short finger along the side of her nose, taking in the update. "It's awful, and believe me, I do spare a thought of condolence for them. Here's the thing. There's probably not much I can do for you, short of giving you access to our records. Any time I do give you is still time I've got better plans for."

"I'm quite sure of your perspectives on that."

Tep cocked her head to one side, a half-sardonic smile on her lips. "And here's where you protest anyway and tell me the US greatly appreciates our help and blah blah tell it to someone who cares."

Pendergast put away the badge and looked evenly at her. "It could be ordered."

"And then I get crankier and it doesn't go well for anyone."

"Quite understandable. It would not be a preferential choice. May I sit?" He gestured at the chair across from her.

Both eyebrows rose nearly into her hairline. "I'd suggest you're heading in the wrong direction."

"Tell me why." He spread his hands, expression mild. With quick grace, he dropped into the seat without waiting for further permission. "It may be there is another way of looking at matters."

. . .

Tep puffed a sigh and rubbed each palm across the worn faux leather armrests of her chair. She looked up at the ceiling with a weary roll of her eyes. "I get the feeling it'd be quicker than trying to just force you to get the hell out of my office. Fine." She dropped her gaze back to the agent and leaned forward, steepling her hands on her desk.

"You've got embassy statistics, and I'll tell you they're low. We've got less than twelve women's clinics and shelters and one main office for the CWCC, just in Phnom Penh. Now, your stats will tell you that this quarter alone, we have seen over seventy sex traffic cases officially go into the courts. Over a hundred and fifty women have come out – in three months, remember, and just here in the city – claiming domestic violence. Five dozen rapes. This on top of us knowing for a fact that nearly a quarter of all tourism to Cambodia involves sex tourism." She tapped her fingers together, a bitter smile on her face. "These are just official numbers. Do you want to try counting the jellybeans?"

He slung one leg over another and watched her with a careful expression. "The police are not often trusted, then."

Tep shook her head and let frustration pour out. "Nothing is often done. Nothing will be done, until a lot of cultural change happens. I've been back in Cambodia almost twenty years; spent most of them working in offices like this one. I know the speed of progress here. I'll spare you the history lesson, but let me break this down – the official stats are a fraction of what we see in these clinics. A tiny fraction. _I don't have time_ to work your one case for you. I can't give it special treatment. You can look at what we have on hand, chase a windmill for a connection to the dead you've got. I won't interfere on that. I _am_ sympathetic. But I'm not going to break myself to help because when you get whatever you think you need, we're still here with another dozen, another hundred broken or dead women who can't go home. You can." She shrugged. "That's nice, you're lucky."

Agent Pendergast looked at her through nearly closed lids for a long time. "You are absolutely correct."

Tep blinked hard, despite herself. Before she could say anything, he continued. "The chief of security at the embassy believes the murder and mutilation of three women, including an embassy employee, goes far beyond that. I believe him; such crimes do not escalate in a vacuum and whomever is committing them has had practice. Practice which would necessarily be local. Practice which, as you and I clearly understand, may go all but unnoticed against the backdrop of your everyday horrors. There still may wait a trace of information in your past victim records, yes, or perhaps some half-remembered witness. Something one of your women have seen, or perhaps survived, over the last year."

He clasped his hands together, bringing them underneath his jaw. "I can stop it. One statistic alone, true. Not enough to dent your load. I can do little more. I won't dissemble, nor raise your hopes. But this one I can end. Jaded or not, that must be worth something to you. Just that many fewer dead women next week or next month."

Tep stirred. "It's still not worth an excessive amount of my time rooting around to see if any of my people know anything."

"No. I can hardly ask for much. What you can manage."

Her mouth twitched in a dry, unhappy grimace. "You realize I'm also more than a little pissed that this only became an issue because it happened to foreigners."

One hand lifted from beneath his jaw in a flat-palmed gesture of acknowledgment. "Utterly understandable. I cannot change the circumstances. However, I am certain this has affected both our communities. I would see justice for both."

Tep crossed her arms over her thin chest, lips pursed. Despite her judgments, he was a compelling speaker. It was also, she had to admit privately to herself, nice to see something occasionally resolved. This man had enough unstoppable manner to give her a gleam of hope that something might be done. Just once. "And what's justice in this case?"

Agent Pendergast smiled, pleasant and chilly all at once. "That depends entirely on my eventual suspects."


	7. Chapter 7

7.

Ketmoni Tep had reluctantly given Pendergast a list of nearby clubs that specialized in 'exotic trade,' with a grudging promise to send whatever reports that seemed relevant to his given information to his hotel later. Still unwilling to make promises, she'd explained that she had an assistant in the evening with quicker fingers among the stacks, and a good memory for anomaly and rumor. The clubs, meanwhile, were a constant source of victims to be cared for and placed; young women sold for various reasons to various types of men at all hours of the day and night. Anything could be seen or sold at those clubs – if the right questions were asked.

Before he'd left, she'd given him one more piece of information – bauk, streetgang rape had become an increasingly serious problem for local women. She personally knew of half a dozen gangs that took part in the 'game,' many leaving their victims abducted and left dead far from home to please their bong thom, their leaders. None of them were particularly sadistic otherwise, and Tep didn't know offhand if any of them had taken a gruesomely spiritual bend, but the depressing knowledge was still welcomed.

. . .

The club called itself Happiness 616, but it didn't particularly matter. In another week, the name would change and so would the faces inside. The music, strange, arrhythmic Korean hip-hop, piped over slightly tinny loudspeakers and was ignored by most of the patrons. The few that cared to listen clustered at the far end of a dance floor that would have been rejected in the American '70's, but the glassy expressions of the dancers showed little interest in that fact.

The place seemed made of corners otherwise, each one dark and filled with smoky tables that each held a near-permanent cloud of cheap, poor quality weed, despite a sign near the entry that denied the use of drugs inside. There were booths elsewhere inside, but they were 'premium' for privacy and cost a cover just to sit in them. Thin faces peered out from each one, some of them young, some of them ageless in some hurt, recognizable way. Among the rest of the tables were men, local and tourist, talking in their own small knots and carefully ignoring other groups. Occasionally more confused looking tourists came in to have a cheap, watered beer before leaving with expressions of unease.

One tourist sat alone, or rather a crap journalist, the bouncers assumed. He kept an old-fashioned notebook at his side and fiddled occasionally with a pen in his long, twitchy fingers. Ink stains marked khaki cargo pants and other stains, probably ketchup and marker, marred the otherwise matching shirt. His face was long and seemed dirty, and his hair was a drab light brown that stuck to his forehead. He seemed meek, ignorable, sipping occasionally at the second weak beer a girl with dead eyes delivered to him. The first seemed forgotten, sweating on the far side of his little table.

The owners of the bar conferred with their bouncers once, apparently unnoticed by the man with the notebook, and judged him harmless. There were foreign rags that liked to do pieces on the various 'trades' of Cambodia; so long as this skinny idiot didn't think to press for names or got cute with any of the big shots in the club, he could drink shitty beer all night. A little publicity could mean extra cash for them.

That suited the 'journo' just fine. Pale eyes quicker than his slack, harmless expression belied tracked the regular, repeating faces that moved from table to table, marking each one with quick mental notes. The notepad itself was filled only with virtually unreadable, looping scrawls in French and English, a meaningless mess of old philosophy and, for cover, dry, obscure opinions on the internal décor.

He concluded that four men controlled most of the room, two of which he'd followed from a similarly dirty club over an hour earlier. In the wake of each of these four, the empty seats at each passed table filled with a girl – not yet women, most of them. He kept his expression firmly under control as the youngest of them, perhaps only ten, seated herself at a table already kept by two large foreign men. Russian, perhaps, or American. Their faces were broad and thick and they spared the girl in a too-loose tank top only a glance before gesturing to the waitress for another drink.

As the 'big bosses' moved on back into the booth area, he watched the girls instead, watching their expressions carefully . Most of them were as blank and unreadable as a wall, but a few were openly afraid. Those he watched closest, watching where their eyes went. Most were only afraid of their vastly older clientele. One, then another, followed the back of the man who sold them with wide eyes. He marked that man's face again, not one that he had followed from the earlier club. He watched lips to catch a name – _Banak_ , and filed it for better investigation.

He had no way of knowing whether any of these men would connect to the case, but thus far he had nothing to follow except the omnipresent web of corruption that tied the sex trade together. Any one of them might know something. It was worth a try while he waited for the results of Tep's unwilling help.

. . .

After another hour of watching banter and illicit transactions occur in hazy shadows, the man called Banak slipped out the door of Happiness 616 and into the nighttime street crowd. The journo seemed to ignore the departure, waiting a just-long-enough moment to drop a couple crumpled, sweaty bills onto his table, and then stumbled out, nearly forgetting his notebook.

On the streets, several paces behind Banak, Pendergast's gait quickened into its normal predatory pace. His gaze had no trouble staying on the back of the small man's head, though he still slumped to try and lessen the impact of his height among the local crowd.

Pendergast followed the man through several twisting turns with no problem, keeping an even distance back until the two of them found themselves back on one of the main arteries of the city. The street clogged with motos bringing hundreds of drunk tourists back into the better kept districts for an evening's rest. The sidewalks themselves began to cluster with life as they approached a knot of American-run hotels and the agent stopped hunching to try and keep his height advantage. Banak was beginning to slip away; his natural small size giving him an advantage in the press.

Near the north end of the street, Pendergast dropped his hand sharply to his side as a glass bottle shattered into pieces near him, but a flick of his gaze told him it wasn't meant to be his problem. Unfortunately, he was pushed back against a shouting crowd as a sudden fight broke out between three moto drivers – a common sideshow event on the Phnom Penh streets after dark. With the barest gleam of frustration crossing his face, Pendergast watched Banak slide down a distant alley and vanish into the night, unaware of how close he'd been to experiencing Agent Pendergast's particular idea of investigative scrutiny.

He thrust himself through the swelling crowd anyway, forcing himself up to where he'd lost sight of the little pimp and peered down the dark alley. No trace of Banak remained.

Pendergast shook his head and slid back into the crowd, no longer having to fight against it. His brief failure was unimportant. He had the name, the face, and perhaps some of the man's routine and style. If his other sources crossed paths with these traffickers, he would try again another night.


	8. Chapter 8

8.

Pendergast awoke all at once, no trace of sleep left in eyes that caught the glint of pre-dawn light through filmy peach-colored curtains. Any dreams he had wavered in the thin haze and a shake of his head let them go entirely. He sat up quickly, catching the soft red blink of the hotel answering machine in the corner of his vision and reached out to start the first of two recorded messages.

 _"You have the luck of a deva, weird cop guy."_ Ketmoni Tep's voice sounded both exhausted and vaguely, irritably amused. _"Also, fuck you, at my age I usually prefer more sleep than what I got tonight. Come by today after three, got a specific reason why. I'd just send you the files that I've got, but they'll make more sense with context. Skip lunch. It's not going to be a great day for your appetite, not that you look like you eat much."_ The call ended with the crunch of a phone dropping into its receiver. Pendergast allowed himself a small smile at the woman's brusque attitude and pressed the button again. This one was Thelonius Jameson, reminding him of an early morning meeting to look over progress. There was an undercurrent to his voice that suggested he knew there wouldn't be much yet, but he had to keep to certain protocols.

Pendergast allowed the machine to erase the messages, then smoothly slid out of bed, ready to prepare for the day.

. . .

Chief 'Ed' Jameson lounged against the white-painted archway of the ambassador's empty office, having given her his morning report before she was due for a meeting offsite with city officials. He rubbed at a thick bicep through the military-green t-shirt he wore, looking down his nose and its fat black mustache at Glenn Bailey, the embassy's main cultural attache. Most of the man's peevish soliloquy drifted over him and the chief of security nodded in the right places. A security lapse at another intern's apartment complex, notations about the food at official events that were pointless to him, a laundry list of minor complaints.

Eventually a sharper note entered the attache's voice and it brought Ed's attention full center onto the smaller man.

"But what I really wanted to talk to you about, Ed, was this FBI guy you brought in on the Bellani shitstorm. Look, I know Cambodia's got enough corruption to make the simplest joint investigation complex, but you dropped the rules instantly to bring in some lone ex-army brat you seem to know. That looks fucked." Glenn spread his hands expansively, clearly annoyed.

Ed gave the man a slow blink, arched a thick black eyebrow. "He's good at his job," he offered in a mild tone.

"That is not what I hear, Ed." Bailey's hands dropped to his side, frustrated. "We're supposed to have a full team flown in, do this by the book and hand in hand with the local authorities. Updates, cross-culture handshakes, the whole nine yards. I do not want Sihamoni to have any reason to give me an angry phone call."

"The king is not that sort of guy, Glenn, and you know that far better than I do." Ed frowned. The still-new King Sihamoni had been nothing but courteous to the embassy since his ascension. Ed had met him at a formal dinner and found him a pleasant and humble man. Hun Sen, the prime minister, was a shakier bastion to work with. It was an odd choice of targets to assume concern about.

"Maybe not, but this guy, Pendergast? He's trouble. I called his home office."

Ed rolled his eyes. "Jesus, Glenn. Do I get to set up the dinner napkins for your next shindig in exchange?"

Bailey snorted air out his nose. "They don't like him there. They don't like him anywhere. I say again, he's _trouble_ , and that's the last thing we need in this house."

Ed shook his head and resettled against the doorjamb. "You're right that I knew the guy. Enough to tell you he knows the land, if not the city. Sure, he's unconventional, but I am overseeing some unconventional shit." He flashed a brilliant, white-toothed smile against dark lips, enjoying Bailey's unconscious blink and slight recoil. "But regardless, Glenn, he's my problem, not yours. Any shit that gets dumped on this house is going to route right through the plumbing onto my head." He lifted a shoulder in a lazy shrug. "Beats the napkin duty."

Bailey stepped back and returned the shrug in a quick, annoyed way. "Fine. But when oversight asks what the hell happened with that guy and you're up to your ass in shit, do me a favor and remember I told you you should have stuck with regulations."

"I will do that, Glenn. Thank you very much for your interest and concern." Ed bowed his head deeply enough to thoroughly outline the sarcasm behind the gesture.

. . .

Ed watched the cultural attache do his best to not storm down the hall towards the elevators with a slight smirk on his face. "You get to catch the floor show?" He craned his head around to glance back over his shoulder, marking the edge of a shape just beyond the turn of another hallway.

"I saw enough," came the dry drawl.

Ed gave his head a little shake and pushed away from the ambassador's door, beckoning to Agent Pendergast to follow him towards his office. "You do leave friends everywhere behind you. Seems like you get them lining up ahead of you, too."

"Quite," was the neutral reply. Jameson thought he saw a flicker of faint amusement on the slender face but wouldn't have bet aloud on the observation. He held the door of his office open for the agent, who slid by him soundlessly to drop into a seat. "I'll be brief. I have nothing." He spread thin hands and looked up at the chief.

"So far."

"Yes. So far." Pendergast watched a tired expression creep onto the chief's face. "There are opportunities coming. I shall see if any of them bear dark fruit. I assume you've heightened security measures for all embassy employees?"

"Yeah. Yeah, Glenn was bitching me out about an apartment security break, which would be a legitimate conversational point if I hadn't already had five memos about it on my desk this morning when I walked in, not to mention the three frantic phone calls I had in the dead of night." Ed scruffed a hand across his hair. "I don't think it was anything, just one of the attache staff bringing home a boyfriend without the right clearances. I'll give you a copy of that, just in case."

"I appreciate it. Is that the only recent event?"

"Yeah, recent. Kidnappings are down, so that's something. This is the first major event to really hit the embassy directly in a very long time." The tired expression deepened and he leaned forward across the desk towards Pendergast, clasping his hands together. "Glenn's not a bad guy. I know he wants this sorted out as much as any of us."

"And yet here I am, in defiance of procedure." Pendergast looked away. "Something of a risk."

Ed sighed. "The difference is, I _need_ this sorted, and for that, I'm taking that risk."

An arched, pale eyebrow. "Your career?"

He shook his head in response. "No, nothing like that." He glanced around the room, laid his eyes on one of the landscape paintings he'd picked up over the years in lieu of having a window. "I came back here in '83, Sergeant. Felt like I wasn't done with the place, so I made it a home. Been working security here ever since, trying to keep connections going outside the place. I've watched this country try to catch up with the era it's in, while at the same time committing to the same awful shit we knew it for behind closed doors. You know what I've got to show for it?"

Pendergast looked back, impassive.

"Nothing." Ed smiled. "It just keeps getting worse in the dark places, feeling like it's always blotting out that little bit of hope."

"So, go back West. You have nothing to stay for." Pendergast's words had taken a cool, distant tone.

Ed shook his head. "No. Giving up's not what we do. Sooner or later I'll see something change. Meanwhile, I'll make the calls to make the worst of it stop, no matter how." He looked up into the noncommittal face and its glittering, hooded eyes. "I was here in '94. Two different major kidnappings of westerners that year. Three victims each then, too. Taken by remnants of the Rouge."

"I heard." There was a finality, a sharpness to the usually slow Southern voice, but Ed Jameson pressed on anyway.

"They took them, two girls and a man, away from a roadblock, into the jungle, and executed them. Had the audacity to try to claim a ransom. I read the notes. Fucking laughable. A few months later, three backpackers torn away from a train after the tracks were deliberately blown. Marched those poor fucking kids into the jungle. Executed."

The pale face was closed to him. Ed felt an unreasonable jab of irritation with the man. "Every few months another little everyday horror like this comes up. A kidnapping, a murder, another old, dead nightmare pulled out from under the porch. Not one of them goes by that I don't think about what happened to you and the boys, and how little I could help."

Agent Pendergast abruptly stood up in a single, smooth motion. He towered over the chief of security with a cold stone mask for a face. Ed barreled onward, looking up into the wide, freezing stare. "Now I know what actually happened out there in that jungle is between you and God. I also know I put my money on God talking about it to me first."

"Quite. We're done for today." Pendergast turned to go.

"One more thing."

"You've said plenty. I of course recognize your dedication to seeing this through." He didn't turn around.

"I didn't call you specifically because I thought offering a chance at some sort of revenge would be a good idea." Ed examined the black-clad back, not feeling particularly proud of how the conversation had turned out. "More like expiation."

The figure in black paused for less than a second, and the white-blond head dipped in a nearly-imperceptible nod. Then he was gone.

Thelonius 'Ed' Jameson, former warrant officer of 5th Special Forces ODA-531, slammed open the bottom drawer of his heavy, industrial metal desk to get out his flask of emergency whiskey. " _Vaya con Dios_ , you weird little fucker." He sighed the words to himself and pulled a long sip from the flask before putting it away again.


	9. Chapter 9

9.

Ketmoni Tep was waiting for Agent Pendergast as he arrived at the clinic at three o'clock sharp, standing by her receptionist who had a markedly more friendly, if still reserved expression. The receptionist still kept one hand under the desk, however. Tep searched the agent's face, wondering if she saw a hint of weariness there. Probably not. Likely just the heat. She led him, not to her office, but a back room filled with stacks of files overflowing the drawer system. They passed several sealed interview rooms with secure glazed windows on the way. "You're prompt. That's strange around here. We're going to have a little wait, but that'll give you some time to look some things over."

She gestured to a set of chairs by a rickety looking desk, picking up a woefully thin file from the top of a central heap and dropped it before the agent with a grim look of pleasure. "Don't be worried. Quality, not quantity. Mayuri – my assistant - came across the first of those in the files late last night when I was about to give up and go get some food."

Pendergast flipped the manila cover open and took out the first of over a dozen single-sheet reports, glanced at the even thinner sheaf of photographs underneath with a squint of his eyes that was very nearly a wince. Tep caught the glance with a mirthless smile.

"Yeah, welcome to my every day." She took a chair on the other side of the desk. "Four of those women are dead that I know of. Most of the rest are just gone."

His gaze flicked briefly back up to her and then down to resume scanning the reports. Each of them would have barely been a cover sheet in the United States, but here it was all they had. Fourteen reports of women who had been dragged into deep jungle northwest of Phnom Penh, each of them with some whisper of a story about animistic rituals of power and a relentless series of gang rapes. One of them, seven months ago, had shown long cuts on her body and claimed that the men wanted to put things in them. The police had disregarded that one as fantasy, much as Pendergast then disregarded a quiet knock at the room's open door. Tep's people kept the detail, if unable to pay it much heed. Scant information, but critical. Pendergast flipped through the rest, and felt an icy finger touch his neck. Three of them had a name to give. The same name.

Siha. Lion.

He thinned his lips, considering. It was a common Khmer name - it even had its place in the royal family. In this case, more likely a chosen title, a form of braggadocio. Still, something. Something he could track. He glanced up again to find the fierce, permanently aggravated grin of Tep aimed at him. "Took us half the night to pull all that together, then a mess of calls this morning. Most of that shit got tossed by the city police; they'd rather blame the Vietnamese, angry boyfriends, the victims. Do anything but their job. But, I told you there was luck on you. We're not done." She jutted her chin at him. "I've got someone here now. She's what you want."

. . .

Her name was Bopha, and she sat stock still in a steel and canvas chair in an open interview room just down the hall from the records. She was maybe sixteen at most, though it was hard to tell against the skin and bones barely visible under a large, loose shirt and matching skirt in dark, swirling tones. Her arms were hidden and huddled close to her body under the shirt. She wore a checkered krama tight around most of her face, but two hard, black eyes stared unflinchingly out at Tep and the pale Westerner.

Tep came around to the girl's side and sat on a cheap plastic stool, murmuring something in rapid Khmer to her that Pendergast couldn't translate. Bopha's eyes never left him and he saw both anger and a kind of vengeful deadness in them. He clasped his hands in front of him and waited patiently. Tep nodded to him, then looked again into the girl's face. " _Jaa_. I promise."

The eyes flickered once from face to face. "American. Police American, _jaa?_ "

" _Baat_ , close." Pendergast nodded to underline the point.

"You find other girls hurt like me, want to stop. Want to find these men." Bopha gestured to herself through thin fabric, then a symbolic wave towards the door.

"Yes. I do."

"This is a promise. You hunt, policeman?" She watched him carefully, suspicious despite whatever assurances Tep had given her. Her voice shook with an undercurrent of quiet rage. "Police here do not help. I am only shamed. I am left in dirt, like soiled cloth." She rose her chin. "I am not dirt."

Pendergast waited quietly, watching Tep lay a hand of comfort on the girl's buried arm. "I intend to do my best." He inclined his head politely. "That is no small effort or weak promise."

Bopha's eyes glittered, dipping her head to listen as Tep spoke to her in Khmer to ensure the intent of his words came across. Finally she raised her head to look him in the eye. "This is a promise, then. I have waited to tell of him. Tep finds my name, calls friends at other places. I hear, so I come as quickly as I can. To talk. Siha, _bong thom_. Always Siha speaks loudest." She nodded her head as Pendergast shifted his weight, eyes widening very slightly. "You see the name, Ketmoni says. He has another one, I don't know it." She bowed her head in apology, an automatic response from an angry face, looked up to see the pale man's jaw set. "He does not come into the city. His 'little brothers' do. Buy in the city."

"From other sellers of women."

She nodded. " _Jaa_. Not as much lately. I last see a little brother make buy some three months ago. I watch for them." The words came with a kind of ferocious pride.

The time fit. The information fit. These were better leads than he could have hoped for from the clinic. Worth a chance for a little more luck. "You know Siha's face?"

Her chin lifted out from the scarf to flash him a smile that was more a snarl. "I know each line of it. I know him. I know his brothers. I _remember_." Bopha swallowed hard. "I give you their faces. You will know them from what I give. First, you must know what they do."

She brought her left arm up and out from the snarl of the shirt for him to see. It ended in a shattered, mangled hand, the fingers healed in a gnarled mockery of an elegantly stretched palm. The palm of a dancer.

"As they took me, over and over, many days. They hurt me and laughed. They called me _apsara_ and said that they spit on the Gods that made me wife."

After a long, shuddery inhale, she told him the rest.

. . .

Tep walked Pendergast out, keeping in silence till she had him out the door. As Bopha had asked, Tep then gave the agent the sheaf of papers the girl had brought in with her. Sketches of several men; not realistic, angular and artistic in broad, dark strokes with swaths of color applied by the side of one mangled hand. But each one had notable features that would lead to recognition – a particular mole, a way the mouth curved, the exact tilt of dark, almond eyes.

Ketmoni let him look through each one, watching him memorize them quickly and closing his eyes to file away the knowledge. She shrugged. "You keep 'em. It's what she wants. She's putting that burden on you, which might not be fair, but I think she's about had enough unfairness to spread it around a bit. Keep the promise. Find those assholes; for her sake if not for the three that got you here."

Pendergast tilted his head down to regard her carefully. His eyes were narrowed, questioning.

"By the way, if you thank me, I will deck you. That's my promise." She flapped a hand at him. "Don't come back here. I'm busy. Take it up with a _deva_ if you need anything more, since they seem to be tossing you a few scraps."


	10. Chapter 10

10.

Pendergast returned to the hotel long enough to make a slightly complicated delivery arrangement with the front desk, leaving them with a thick package and a wad of money as both payment and bribe to be sure it was handled correctly. Then he visited his room for a time, ate a well-spiced bowl of pho that he barely tasted, and then put on the persona of the feckless journalist again. He had misgivings about using the same generic role more than once, but there were comparatively few options even for him on the city streets. Though he could change his face slightly, rely on forgetfulness and disinterest, there were few ways to hide his height or his skin enough to pass as anything other than a traveler.

. . .

Three nights of terrible beer and even worse music in half a dozen little holes, and the 'journalist' didn't track any of the faces from the pictures. Nor did he cross paths with his previous target, the pimp Banak. The mornings meant avoiding the hotel phone, instead leaving short, regular messages with the embassy's automated service to offer bland assurances about his efforts. He could not ever be forced to claim, nor could it be proven that he was avoiding Jameson's attempts to make contact, but the outcome was the same regardless. Besides, the assurances were still the best he could give. Now it was just the slow hunt, and the waiting game, in a city of over a million and a half.

. . .

On the fifth night, bored and frustrated with the city's ability to reinvent itself with new people and new illicit markets every night, he left the hotel at a far later hour than usual, in a manner far stranger than usual.

A few otherwise useless rumors repeated across clubs had given him the name and location of a brothel in the south side of the city, one that a number of peddlers and sex merchants regarded with enough grudging trust to hold the occasional casual meeting at. For a change, he dressed himself all in deep, color-eating blacks and greens, dropped himself like an unsmiling Cheshire cat from the balcony of his room and then kept to shadows and rooftops to go and see.

. . .

The brothel had no name, no sign nor special presence to make it known. It was a dusty, two floor brick and metal building whose arching windows still had hints of the old French Colonial influence. The only clue rested with two surprisingly large bouncers stationed outside the front door. Each was armed with cheap, outdated M16 assault rifles and a jovial, alarming set of smiles. The back was blocked up with trash and broken stonemasonry, but there were slightly open windows all around the building to let in the grudging breeze.

Agent Pendergast perched himself a few feet back from the edge of a sharp metal rooftop overlooking the place, hunched down as small and compactly as he could around his long legs, and watched the comings and goings through a set of military-grade night binoculars. There were many to watch, most of them tourists running the gamut from shame-faced to boisterous. He watched the night air shift the curtains from room to room, picking out what voices he could from the building. As active as the business was, the women made nearly no sound, letting the clientele say or shout what they will. The silence otherwise troubled him, tickling at memories entirely unhelpful and so he shoved them away.

For all the faces, none were familiar. If there were meetings held there, one was not that night.

He let the binoculars drop, squinting down at the passings-by with his own sharp eyes, rubbing once at the narrow bridge of his nose with a gloved finger.

Time passed, and he allowed a small taste of frustration to wash over and through him, then ignored it. He had what his few trails could give him. Now he needed only a little more luck. Perhaps not that night, but he could be patient. He could be patient a very long time.

Another hour passed and he shifted at last, very slightly. Dawn would be coming, and the Cambodian sun seemed to rise quick. He moved to put the binoculars away and then stopped, changing course to pull them back up to his eyes.

Banak ambled up the street, cockily greeting the bouncers with rapid-fire conversation in both Khmer and English. That was something. Pendergast still had no guarantee that it was a worthwhile place to press, but the man had clear power in the clubs where he did go, and that meant a slight chance he knew Siha's 'brothers.'

When the pimp pushed through the bouncers into the building, Pendergast picked his route across the surrounding rooftops and jumped to the brothel's stone top. He dropped his head down to peer along the back of the building, eyeing a single dark room with a window open the slightest bit wider than the rest.


	11. Chapter 11

11.

Banak kept his hands in loose khaki pockets that dangled with a wallet-chain, enjoying the sound of American coins jingling in his pockets. He roamed the halls on the first floor of the brothel, stopping to listen at doors where girls he'd had a hand in setting up were placed. He heard enough male sounds of pleasure to keep him whistling about a good night's business, pitching the sound low enough to not disrupt the customers. Of the girls, he thought little. He kept them clean and pitched out what he felt was a grandiose sum in food costs to keep them healthy enough to work. This was a better opportunity than many of them had, he supposed. Not much education, very dangerous in the jungles. This was better. It was business all around, no reason for the girls to be upset with things.

Sometimes they cried at him anyway, upset with one thing or another. He found that irritating; didn't they know how hard it was to keep a business strong and going with all this competition? No matter, it was easy to keep them in line. If they misbehaved too much, he had plenty of clientele willing to pay a little extra for the privilege of doing his obedience training for him.

. . .

He kept whistling through his teeth as he moved upstairs to a better kept floor, where women were given more hours of sleep and extra rice to keep them more enthusiastic. Due to cost, more rooms were dark and empty, these girls often taken elsewhere at the requests of their buyer. Admittedly, fewer of his own girls worked up here, but the rest of the ring he worked with had a friendly sharing agreement, so long as territory lines were kept to beyond the brothel walls. The business benefits were there, why not help himself to them at any chance?

As he approached the far end of the hall, one of the doors to a darkened room swung open with a quiet creak. Banak craned his head back over his shoulder, narrowing his eyes at the chance that one of the girls might have ideas of leaving her room without permission. No one stepped into the hall, however, and he stepped towards the room to make sure the door hadn't somehow fallen open of its own accord.

Banak paused in the open doorway, glaring into what seemed to be empty darkness and seeing nothing. He began to turn away again when a black-gloved hand clamped firmly over his mouth and he was pulled inexorably inside the room by a dark shape whose outline he couldn't quite make out. He grunted as he struggled, not panicking yet. The bouncers patrolled regularly and could handle an unruly customer or whatever this was easily, so he thought.

The taller figure half-dragged him deep inside and kicked the door shut, pulling him close to the wall near the bed. With a flick of his gaze, Banak saw the thin metal shape of a knife glint alarmingly close to his throat. His dark eyes began to widen despite his confidence. He opened his mouth to protest against the taste of well-oiled leather and felt a set of long fingers force it back closed. He began to exhale through his nose, real fright beginning to finally set in as none of his struggles gave him so much as an inch. And the knife was coming closer.

. . .

Agent Pendergast held Banak in death's own frozen grip, one arm and hand controlling the man, the other now pressing the long edge of the combat knife against the pimp's throat. He lowered his head next to Banak's and whispered to him in a soft, accent-less voice. "The patrol comes within the minute. If they knock, you will respond pleasantly, if slightly upset at the interruption." The man struggled again, gaining nothing. "I know you understand me. I understand you. If you do not do what I say, you will die. Your men outside will die." He let the knifetip press into the skin very lightly, not yet drawing blood but causing a noticeable hiss of pain, glancing up at the door as distant footsteps drew closer.

The man breathed heavily under his hand, then nodded as fast as he could. Pendergast steeled himself, dropped the hand from the pimp's mouth to place it on the .45 caliber pistol at his waist. The window was near his back. The drop was long, but escape was easy if matters went sour.

Heavy footsteps came to the door and stopped. Banak's heavy breathing seemed to fill the air, punctuated suddenly by a soft knock.

Banak swallowed hard, the sound clicking in his throat. The knife pressed again and his brain screamed out the poor odds of his chances to escape. "Banak?" came the quiet question. He licked his lips and responded in Khmer just as he had been asked – _I'm here, I'm busy, no offense but fuck off, friend._

There was a long pause and a chuckle. " _Have a good time, brother_." The footsteps began to recede.

. . .

Pendergast took his hand off his gun, the gamble paying off. His knowledge of Cambodian languages was too slim to be useful in a complex situation; he had to bet everything on the pimp being frightened enough to take him at his word and playing as ordered. That being the only bet he cared to play, however, he brought his arm back up and across the man to ensure his hold once more. "Very good," he hissed. "Now we have _plenty_ of time to talk."

. . .

Banak swallowed again, still unable to tell anything about the man except that he wasn't Cambodian and that he was taller and far more powerful than Banak was. "Wh-what do you want?" He licked his lips again, shamed at how weak his voice sounded.

"Let's discuss business. Buyers. Sellers. _Unique_ transactions."

"I can't give you that!" He pictured his business empire clear in his mind, watching it tremble like vapor. If he gave up his partners, his 'brothers' in business, and they found out, it would all go away. Taking with it, quite possibly, large pieces of his body. He felt he was a big fish, but that meant little when a dozen sharp-teethed small ones could descend on you in retaliation.

" _Can't_ is a deceptive word. It implies impossibility when in fact little is impossible when _friends_ are talking." Dear Gods, was the man smiling beside his head? Nothing about the words sounded friendly. The knife slid very slightly and Banak felt a line of something hot and wet drip down the line of his throat. The pain came a few seconds later. "I assure you, it is merely that you think you _won't_ talk."

Banak felt the man move and he instinctively tried to push away towards the door. The man's tall form appeared in front of him before he could do more than twitch, shoving him back hard against the wall. An arm reappeared across his throat and he began to choke, black spots appearing before his eyes and stars sparking after them. Now the knife was even to his nose, and the man himself still in darkness, face painted black and eyes unseen.

"If I talk, I'm dead!" he protested, feeling the blackout draw close.

"Then you have a very serious conundrum on your hands." The pressure eased and he gasped for air. He tried once more to push past the man, growing desperate, but found no purchase. Another choking attack came, and again the world wavered.

And again. The tall man was implacable. Against the haze and headache of oxygen loss, Banak looked at his odds again and found one thing certain – this man _would_ kill him. From the others, he had a tiny chance to flee. He gave up, trembling and sliding down the wall, and began to recite everything he knew.


	12. Chapter 12

12.

Pendergast sat in the fading darkness of his hotel room, face roughly scrubbed cleaned of tactical paint but still in his stalker's blacks. He did not meditate or sleep; neither appealed to him and dawn was on the very verge of breaking. Instead he sat cross-legged on the floor and stared at the drawn peach balcony curtains as they flowed softly in the faintest of breezes. The cool, jasmine-tinted air didn't touch him. He felt nothing save a distant, chilly anger and a sense of purposeful hunt.

Banak had given up almost everything to him, except probably dimly remembered childhood memories. In allowing the sad little creature to ramble, the pimp had no way of knowing what was important to his attacker and what wasn't. He spoke of years inside the sex trafficking trade; the clinical datapoints of completing a transaction, the methods of 'acquiring stock,' the ways of 'acclimating' their _products_ to their duty. He spoke of buyers, of when questions were asked, and when questions were not. He spoke of his friends in the prostitution ring, of other rings, and threw out dozens of gossips. He talked about how they could add easy premiums to girls they deemed virginal; the superstition still persisted that such a young, unused woman could be taken and it would cure AIDS in the male.

Pendergast let it all wash over him, knowing much of it from the distant, clinical citations within Bureau bulletins and the psychological study of crime. Matching it with faces he had seen, living and dead, could impact stone. It disgusted him. Not that such crime existed. He knew perfectly well the darker, violent face of human society. It was the realization that such crimes were so common that they had become unremarkable. It was ordinary business to an entrepreneur. Not slavery of another human being.

With little prodding, Banak told him relevant things. While he spent no real time on the story, he knew Siha's men. He gave names, anecdotes about a year-long series of sales at the northern edge of the city. Mentioned that they 'toured' different sellers and still came into town for entertainment now and again. Then Banak had segued on to something else. The concept that women he had given away might have died out there didn't seem to cross the man's mind.

It had taken a great deal of effort to not simply push the pimp out the window and onto shattered stone and glass when his words began to falter into repetition. On reflection, Pendergast asked himself serious questions about why he hadn't. It was certainly unlikely to be more than the barest blip on the radar for police, and it would have erased the remotest chance of his actions reaching the ears of someone who might suspect and challenge the agent. Yet he'd let the man live; choked into unconsciousness and left on a filthy brothel bed, to be sure, but breathing.

Well, there was always the chance his friends would turn on him in the days to come. Banak could hide the marks from his attack only so long, and he seemed a poor liar.

As the the dawn fully broke, Pendergast made his daily call to the embassy, being sure to route himself to the automated message service. When night came around again, he had more worthwhile trails to track. Banak's stories suggested a good chance one of Bopha's painted faces would slip into the center of the city that evening or the next.

. . .

It ultimately took three nights to find one of his targets, of which one day was spent away from the hotel entirely while watching Thelonius Jameson stalk the lobby of the Hotel le Royal. Pendergast had no interest in listening to the man circumlocute further around topics he had no business discussing, though he had some sympathy for the concept of 'survivor's guilt.' He was here to complete a job, pressured into it through tenuous and increasingly distant military connections. He did not need to offer a shoulder to a man whom, Pendergast felt, had taken on burdens that were not his to carry.

Jameson was a good man otherwise. Pendergast held no doubts on that score. Jameson had once cared for the ODA split team under his command and had been a consummate soldier and leader; that he knew from direct experience and could rely on the observation. That was important; there was a need to allow a thin line of trust, in case of certain contingencies.

At least once, late, Pendergast thought the ex-officer spotted him far across the street where he lurked through the day, deep in the gardens, tucked into shadows with a book and some overly strong herbed tea. The thick dark head turned in his direction with an expression of consideration, before turning away again. Perhaps coincidence. Perhaps not. Jameson appeared to give up within an hour after that possible glimpse, however, finally ending his haunt.

. . .

On that third night, Pendergast wore a tracker's sleek blacks under a loose, fully covering layer of the journalist's cheap, filthy khakis, his sidearm accessible through careful slits in the fabric and a set of tools for most contingencies in a dozen hidden pockets. The journo was far too familiar a face now and he intended to ditch it as soon as he used it to cut through the heavy weekend crowd while the day was still brightly lit.

He found one face he wanted coming from a club so new it had no name, a young man with a pale scar barely visible above his collar and sharply tilted eyes. Bopha had named him Riddhi. He walked with the cocky stride of a man with nothing to fear, and spent no time watching his surroundings. Pendergast couldn't justify the risk of keeping his journalist self close enough to catch notice – friends nodded warm greetings to Riddhi on every street, darting eyes watching out for the man even if he didn't care. In the wake of this one, the agent felt for the first time the easy, quick way the movement of the crowd could turn with unconscious deliberation against someone in its midst that didn't fit.

He made a few calculated guesses as to the man's path, turned away and picked open alleys in other directions to drop too much notice. The alleys were clear, narrow, and not empty. In several of them, he had to dodge tiny grasping hands and the hectoring voices of men without limbs, demanding whatever the traveler could grant. He shook his head and kept them all well away from his pockets, one small figure coming far too close to his M1911 for his liking and he picked up his pace away from the little throng.

. . .

Riddhi coursed through the narrowing streets of Phnom Penh, gradually going northwest past the city's drying lake. As the sun fell and the agent followed, he guessed wrong only once, quickly picking the trail back up after a clustered knot of shipping-crate homes. He was far from the tourist areas and ensured he fell back ever further as the crowds thinned and more glances picked him up. When the sun finally blazed down beyond the horizon, Pendergast went up, knotting the khakis and wedging them into long-forgotten trash heaps while he followed as best he could from whatever vantage points kept him hidden. In another half mile, the edge of the city would end and he would have to track the man overground for many kilometers. Based on Bopha's stories, the trail would lead to the Aoral jungles that surrounded the Cardamom mountain range.

. . .

Pendergast hotwired a small, rusting car on the outskirts of the city, glancing at the distant plume of dust that rose against the purple-black night sky and drove it carefully over what could only sarcastically be called a 'road' in slow, cautious pursuit. Driving with the headlights off meant extra risks; the roads followed the edges of several dips and severe turns, and he necessarily lost track of the red taillights more than once to ensure he didn't end up stuck in a muddy pit several miles from anything like civilization.

As the darker line of the jungle appeared against the star-flecked night sky, Pendergast watched the the lights of other vehicle vanish as it pulled over to the side. Riddhi would be going on foot, which meant no trails firm enough for cars. He slowed, left his own vehicle off the side of the road further out down in a shallow, pondlike ditch. He checked his tools and his ammunition, let his eyes acclimate to the darkness beyond the car, and carefully slid up the the side of the road until the edges of the jungle absorbed him in velvet night.


	13. Chapter 13

13.

At home in the jungles, Riddhi was a hard figure to track. There was a thin path that went from where they had each entered the thick snarl of greenery, but it was carefully snarled and tangled up in a dozen different switchbacks. An hour of silent, careful tracking covered less than a mile's worth of travel and Pendergast couldn't be absolutely certain his course was correct. He kept one eye on a basic compass, watching to be sure his sense of direction never wavered.

Movement broke the quiet jungle sounds now and again, nocturnal hoots of unseen birds and the crackle of something large moving less than a quarter of a mile away from him. There were still tigers in the deep jungle, often made restless by the incursions of illegal logging camps. Pendergast knew their smells; heavy and thick with predatory musk and rotting meat if they'd fed, but no such warning wafted its way to him and he was careful to skirt any possible hiding places for the beasts that he could identify.

As the evening crawled on and the nightsounds began to spiral louder and more shrill, he smelled distant smoke and his eyes picked out distant gleams of light along an ascending hillside. He froze in place for half the hour, assessing the distant camp and marking its location and its few small shacks on a mental map. He didn't intend to invade that night; only track, identify the possible core group, and get a concept of the surrounding terrain. Since traditional apprehension was unlikely, he considered a number of more tactical options of disposal, with an attempt to at least bring 'Siha' in while he was some approximation of alive to ensure that his crimes would go acknowledged. That would mean preparations for extraction, extra rope besides the slim cords he kept on hand, perhaps even drugs to pacify the target.

. . .

Once he had the camp's outline firmly fixed in his mind, he cautiously began to move closer, circling in around a quarter of a mile to count heads and examine their patterns. To his surprise, he found the camp activity quite low, four men remaining and two gone on into the jungle. Riddhi sat by the fire, clearly drunk and laughing at things unheard while there was no sign of Siha. Pendergast considered the possibility that this was not the main camp and found it extremely likely. A muscle twitched in his jaw and he wryly thought to himself that Tep's devas couldn't do everything for him. The question now was whether to linger, track one of these outliers and see if they led to a main location, or to return another night from another angle.

He began to withdraw, assessing the hours of the night that remained and judging them too slim. He kept silent, leaving even slower than he had arrived, and the gleam of the fire had only just disappeared from view when something crackled sharply not far behind him.

Pendergast pulled his gun in a quick, smooth motion as something heavy slammed into his side and disrupted his balance. Rapid-fire Khmer was shouted out to seek response from other crackling figures, breaking the night and causing a dozen black-outlined birds or more to flutter into the sky, screaming their offense.

There were three that he could see – the two that had left the fire were not among them. That was troubling. Pendergast's eyes widened, rapidly considering the odds and finding complete retreat from the situation best. He raised his firearm and shot at the center mass of the man that shoved into him, winging him as the man managed a life-saving jerk of his body. The man dropped back with an angry cry and Pendergast attempted to sidestep the two men that were now charging towards him. His line of fire was obscured and he ran, glancing back to see if his aim would clear.

He made it a dozen yards, spotting a short drop that, if he could take it right, would give him a precious few seconds of extra lead. As he ducked a low branch and straightened, a short wedge of rebar slammed hard into his chest and knocked out his breath. He staggered, not stopping, but then there were three – and four – and five men catching up to him with strong, grabbing hands and knocking the gun from his grip. The rebar returned, catching him in his left arm to crack at his elbow and the glittering pain took almost a second to gain control of. It was a second too long, and his balance was fully destroyed. He hit the ground and saw there were now seven men around him. They did not look surprised by a white man's intrusion.

 _I was trapped_ , he thought with growing flame. Then the seventh man thumped him hard on the temple with a short club and he was gone.


	14. Part Two: Chankiri Tree

14.

The MH-53 Pave Low helicopter flew frighteningly low over choppy green terrain from Nha Trang to Ho Chi Minh City, its passage going unnoticed by a country barely starting its recovery from decades of guerrilla war. It refueled at a half-dismantled depot not far from the Vietnamese city before changing course to the northwest.

The heavy black machine, known to its caretakers in the USAF as the 'Jolly Green Giant,' breached the border of Cambodia's Svay Rieng province in total darkness. Its deadly twelve-man cargo, US 5th Special Forces ODA-531, dropped silently from ropes on either side of the chopper and immediately fanned out to secure the drop-off point and ensure their insertion had gone unnoticed.

Commander Ryland 'Tuck' Tuchman waited under low cover until he spotted the hand signal of his co-officer, Thelonius 'Ed' Jameson, from the other end of the small clearing. He gave a firm, unmistakable nod, and lifted an arm to wave off the chopper. Inside the cockpit, the pilot of the Pave Low popped him a thumb's up and lifted away, the dull _whomp-whomp_ of the chopper blades fading fast into jungle blackness. Tuchman dropped his hand back onto the top line of his M16 rifle and faded into the trees to wait for the full squad to reconvene at his location.

. . .

ODA-531 was officially ordered to begin preparing and training for a Special Reconnaissance mission two weeks prior after military brass received a CIA brief on Vietnam's escalating intent to enter Cambodia and conflict directly with the Khmer Rouge regime. In the weeks leading up to that report, increasing rumors had begun to come out of the country detailing a massive genocide and political pogroms designed to cripple and divide the populace, with the worst of the atrocities so extreme that many in Washington flat out ignored the reports on grounds of pure disbelief.

As the Rouge were shaky allies of the United States, at one point in the early 70's receiving training firsthand from US military sources, top brass at the behest of the President demanded better information before a public stance could be chosen. That meant a secret, easily disavowed operation to insert troops over the border before Vietnam went in and scout several coordinates over the course of five days – or more, if the operation could self-sustain – to verify any of the information coming out of Cambodia. If they didn't move quickly, the clash of the two unfriendly countries would muddy the water, the Cambodian people already long-distrustful of the yuon across the border. Many Cambodians would be more than happy to leave all their troubles at an enemy's door.

. . .

Tuchman lounged in the lee of a thickly rooted _tung_ tree, enjoying the fresh smell of untouched jungle and wet moss as the company reformed, two by two, half a click northwest of the dropoff. Rucksack loads were reorganized and inventories were quickly taken under furtive, brief-lived lights as the twelve men formed into the two squads that made up the operation. One – Jameson's squad – would be moving west and then slightly north over the five day tour, possibly coming close to the west flank of Phnom Penh before circling back to the extraction point. The other, Tuchman's, would begin by heading north, close to the border, and then tilting west in their own bid to reach the capital. The official route covered about four days of travel and a handful of locations, with plenty of flexible room for an unofficial route. If resources held out, both teams could get relatively close to Beoung Kak Lake before needing to backtrace. He doubted anyone was up for serious sightseeing on the fast pace the mission set for them.

Tuchman paused and corrected himself – at least one of the men might. It was a guarantee that Special Forces accumulated unique, driven individuals, and his attachment was no different. Tuchman sighed to himself and conferred in low tones with Jameson before the other squad slid into the night. After watching the six men depart, Tuchman looked over his own people.

Each man moved with a quiet, easy purpose, the noise of their movements lost in the wild _skree-skree_ of a thousand jungle insects. The comms sergeant tapped idly at the radio he had slung into his ruck, ensuring none of its delicate works had gotten whacked too hard in the drop. Ivan Golovchenko treated any gadgets under his care like the tough-love immigrant child he himself had been; well kept and well cared for, but not above offering a hard thwack on the bottom to get things working right. It was a long-standing legend that the man could be stripped naked and dropped into a cornfield and he would still come up with enough wire to rig a short-range antenna. He caught his Commander's assessing glance and popped a thick thumbs-up, mouth chewing wetly on one of the ubiquitous tiny blocks of cheese he stole from every MRE he could get his hands on. Most of the squad called him 'Lovecheese' in lieu of his guttural last, and why the hell not? He did.

Med Sergeant Malik Bhatt watched Ivan eat with a grimace on a narrow, lightly tanned face, catching Tuck's wry grin and rolling his eyes. Bhatt – stuck with the embarrassing moniker 'Lick-Lick' after fighting over-hard to avoid any nick having to do with 'butt' – temporarily took point to get away from the waft of stale, hard cheese and began carving trail ahead of the group. Not preferred protocol – the med guy in any team was valuable and kept in the middle or the rear, but Ivan had been sucking down snacks for the entire three hundred kilometer trip. It wouldn't hurt the mood to let Bhatt get some fresh air.

The Pixie Dust Twins were kibitzing, some friendly argument over a two month old round of cards leading now directly into some arcane reasoning as to why Dylan Deustch should carry the heavier pack, while Dustin Dickens continually shrugged at him in a 'why me?' hangdog way. As Weapons and Engineering sergeants respectively, they were stuck with the heavier loads as it was. Both carried enough tools and ammunition to either build a bridge or destroy it. Or build the bridge and _then_ destroy it. On one score, the two were in permanent agreement – usually the best solution was to blow something up. After six beers, Deustch could generally be relied on to explain that Dickens wasn't his friend, he was more like an arm. Inseparable, yet sometimes indefinably irritating. They seemed to ignore their Commander as they ceaselessly bickered, while reacting automatically to his signaled orders to begin their march north.

Then there was Pendergast, Intelligence Sergeant. He fit the intelligent part, holding a considerable amount of high level collegiate experience – mostly in _philosophy_ , of all damned things. Ranking officers from other branches were known to visit the 5th's Fort Bragg barracks and be immediately taken aback by the tall, slight wraith that haunted the place. Tuck knew the young man had passed his Q course flawlessly, with top marks in weapons and situational assessment and response. Official reports remarked that he was creepy-fast in as tastefully bland military-speak as possible. Special Forces had pulled him out of standard Army rotation as soon as he'd shown interest in applying for the SFAS and fast-tracked him through the process, signing him to Tuck's crew several operations ago. He spoke very little, and when he did, it was in a slow, elegant Southern drawl so perfect that the rest of the ODA would swear before God it was fake. Hearing him talk enough times eventually led one to the sneaking suspicion that he was also constantly being sarcastic about something, but no one ever drew him out long enough to prove it. Friendly enough guy, reliable as hell, but way too intense to ever be called 'warm.'

Pendergast caught Tuchman's gaze from underneath the low brim of a floppy jungle-camo boonie hat, silver eyes abrupt in the painted face. His head tilted slightly in acknowledgment of orders unsaid and glided silently up the trail Sergeant Bhatt left in the long grass.

Tuchman let out a breath he didn't know he was holding, the rasp of it fading against the background buzz of some massive jungle roach. It was time to get to work.


	15. Chapter 15

15.

Dense jungle worked against those unfamiliar with it in ways both subtle and aggressive. Thick underbrush could hide a dozen different threats running the gamut of manmade traps, dangerous wildlife, and thick, boot-destroying bogs. Things screamed constantly in the night, arguing with screeching birds. There were still real risks of wild elephants and the briefing documentation for the op included a humorless section on what to do when faced with a tiger. The short answer came down to a regretful 'shoot it if under any threat', although Bhatt had respectfully suggested that seemed easier said than done. The resulting discussion after that part of the preparatory briefing had caused one of the Intelligence Sergeant's infrequent wry grins, though nobody seemed to want to ask why he found the chance of being cat food in Cambodia amusing. Tuchman, armed with a fractional amount of personal information about the man, mildly advised the group if a large mammal did get cute with the team – let Pendergast handle it. That prompted another silent half-smirk. It made for a real red-letter day at Nha Trang.

. . .

Early in the first full day, Tuck's squad rounded up close to the first area indicated on their recon tour. Jungle fell away to wet fields of tall grass and in the distance rose rolling wet fields of rice. The sounds of animals drifted behind them in favor of silence. The squad kept low cover, crawling close and checking constantly for movement from the fields. Their intelligence briefing suggested that large numbers of Cambodians had been pressured into collectives, working the fields to feed the morphing Communist society. The rumors claimed that the 'pressure' was terrifying force; the rich, the intellectual, the slow and unlucky dragged into camps to toil hard in the fields under threat of death, many ultimately dying and being replaced by another enslaved prisoner.

There were dozens of people working that particular field, each moving in a slow, robotic trudge. No one stopped, not even for a quick stretch or soft breath, but no one hurried. Perhaps no one could. Near-silence hung over the rice, eerie and heavy and underlined by the soft susurration of worker's tools against thin stalks and rough fabric. The far edges of the field were lined by young men in the black Khmer uniform, _krama_ knotted loose at each stoic, silent throat. The squad fanned carefully, communicating numbers and patrol patterns to each other though an unspoken system. The information ended up with Pendergast; as the Intelligence Sergeant, it would be up to him to evaluate and compile what they saw and send it back home through comms.

They withdraw back into the jungle after a quarter of an hour of observing the scene. Bhatt jutted his chin at Pendergast. "They're definitely exhausted. Not diggin' the job, pun not intended."

"Dangerously so?" Pendergast was hunched into the side of a large tree, using a classified code sheet to sketch out notes for Ivan. He himself didn't need them, his memory one of the traits his superiors loved him for.

"You saw, what did you think?" Malik rolled his eyes and shifted his pack.

"I prefer to not judge over-quickly, nor am I medically competent enough to diagnose from thirty meters away."

Tuck sighed. There it was, that nearly invisible sarcastic edge. That said, it was damn near a monologue from the guy. That gave him a hint that Pendergast didn't like what he'd seen. "They looked like hammered shit, and they looked really scared of that hammer. The uniform kids aren't even looking at them. It's like two different planets over there."

"...Quite." Eyes peeked out from under the brim of the omnipresent hat. Unless he ducked his head in mud – not actually uncommon – he was like a beacon without something on his head.

"You believe the rumors or the brief?" Deustch lounged against the other side of Pendergast's tree, craning his head around to look down at him.

"Mhm." Standard non-committal response from the slender wraith.

Deustch rubbed a hand over his forehead, smudging the green-black paint. Pendergast glanced up again, an eyebrow arching. "I'm unwilling to commit to an opinion after a single data point, however compelling it is."

"Compelling as all fuck, though." Deustch shrugged. He looked over at his partner, ready to get back on the move.

"Yes," came the soft response.

. . .

They found two more vast rice paddies running under similar circumstances that day. These had rough-looking hovels nearby, fenced in with barbed wire and lined with jutting sharp sticks. The gates were run by blank-eyed men who never looked at their charges. In open doorways stood small, dirty children. Too young to work and so unable to earn more than the barest keep, they watched their families in the fields. Their stomachs held the unmistakable look of starvation bloat and from everywhere came the horrible, soft sounds of the small sickles moving endlessly.

After the third paddy, the ODA squad stopped discussing what they were seeing, settling for stern, unhappy glances at each other. Save for Pendergast, who shared nothing on his face, but whose long fingers worked in sharp, curt scrawls over his notes. He refused to be engaged in any conversation until well after nightfall. Even Ivan could tell he was pissed. It was clear that large swaths of the official intelligence briefings amounted to bullshit, but they had miles to go and several more landmarks to check before the team could definitively make the call.

. . .

On the second day they flowed around the outskirts of small villages, all empty. Dirt roads ate footprints and left dust hanging in the air and the tiny homes were long-since ransacked. In several of them were old, dark stains that flowed across the floor and streaked down between rickety slats.

"Where the fuck are all the _people?_ " hissed Dickens when the ghost town was well behind them.

"Gone." The word dropped like a stone into a long-forgotten well. The wraith slid against the smooth side of a fig tree, settling down on his haunches and his hands dropping limp onto his knees.

"No _shit_ ," snarled Dickens, missing the undertone of Pendergast's sole word. "There ain't enough in the fields. There's a lot, to be fucking sure, but where's the rest of them?"

"Don't be dense, Dustin." Malik rubbed absently at his upper arm, irritated by the mark of his pre-op vaccination shot. "You know he means they're dead. Maybe there's something to the prison rumors. They've been right so far."

A silence settled over the group. A monkey hooted in the distance, indifferent to their troubles.

. . .

On the third day, in a long stretch of verdant, coiling jungle that seemed untouched by human hands, the Intelligence Sergeant signaled to the soldier next to him that he was diverting for a quick off-route patrol. He slipped through a veil of underbrush without waiting for a response and was gone. Ivan whistled for the Commander, who had been bringing up the rear. Tuchman ordered the startled group to hold position and went in after Pendergast, more than just a little annoyed.


	16. Chapter 16

16.

Thirty meters away from the break in the brush, Tuchman came up short against a high, moss-coated wall that seemed to just appear before him. His eyes widened slightly, then caught the track of grass tamped down just a little more than the rest and followed it around until he found a gap in the architecture. The broken path led further in, past stone pillars blown nearly smooth by centuries of exposure to the elements. On some of them, he saw ghostly figures of Gods barely remaining; devatas dancing to something unseen beyond a shattered ruin. Sound crackled everywhere; the rustle of nesting bats within a low, dark crevice, a thousand beetle colonies, the soft whistle of colorful tropical birds. And everywhere was the green. It choked the still-pure whiteness of the stonemasonry, forced its mossy gleam across roiling, root-covered earth. It stank of moisture and age, rankled the nose with rotting vegetation and heavy, leafy earth.

From one of the branches, he spotted the quick departure of a small, sleek leopard cat. It left the acrid scent of its marked territory in its wake and a disappearing soft growl. For a split second, he thought he glimpsed its dark amber eyes blinking at him from within some high niche a dozen yards away.

Startled and beginning to feel a certain awe for the forgotten temple, Tuchman stepped ever more gingerly along Pendergast's route. He gaped up more than once, realizing that the outer walls had not fallen apart in time or been shattered by some monsoon – they stood straight and firm, nestled deep within the tallest banyan and _tung_ trees he had ever seen. Beneath arching roots, bas-relief scenes of some lost story ducked in and out of view. He tried to follow them, catching glimpses of a great battle between men and beasts, but lost them within the coiling wood of a tree so massive that it had begun to absorb its neighbors.

He found stone arches still intact and passed cautiously underneath them, caught between his growing discontent at possibly becoming lost in some sprawling forgotten structure and irritation with his sergeant for leading him in there. Tuchman had no doubt the man wouldn't have slipped off without assessing the risk to the group, but he still fully intended to bawl the non-comm out for his cute stunt. Later. When they got well away from that unnervingly beautiful, ancient place.

. . .

Tuchman followed the faint path until it cornered sharply and then opened into a boxlike, open-roofed structure. With his carbine at the ready just in case, he slid carefully into the space and arched both eyebrows straight into his thinning, close-cropped hairline.

His intelligence sergeant sat cross-legged atop a wide stone altar so intact that flecks of ancient color still marked the sides of it in shades of blue and green. It placed him in the perfect center of the little open-air room, its walls a riot of entangled moss and root. He had his chin placed in one thin hand and his elbow upon his knee, boonie hat in his lap and white-blond hair on the edge of growing past regulation. He was staring at something across the narrow space and Tuchman stepped closer to see what it was.

Nestled almost perfectly in the overgrowth was a single, pristine statue. Seven snakes flowed together into one thick body, fourteen sightless eyes staring back at a man nearly as white as itself. Ornate spirals and whirls flowed around it, disappearing into merciless plant cover.

"Naga," said Pendergast, the voice so quiet that it seemed to fade in and out of the dull hum of the jungle. "Cambodia once believed it was the kingdom of the snake, sprung from the union of Gods and priests." His head turned slightly to look at the Commander, pale eyes reflecting nothing. "I think perhaps it still believes that."

 _You are always weird as catshit in a handbag, Sergeant, but this is reaching a whole new water level,_ Tuck thought and didn't say. His expression said it for him, though he swallowed hard, unnerved in a way that he hadn't felt during any other operation with the man.

"You do feel it, don't you?" The question was low and musical.

Tuchman wondered vaguely if Pendergast was about to go nuts. Instead he cleared his throat and jutted his chin towards the other man, looking for a more normal conversational tangent. "What's the deal with the carvings all over the place?"

" _Ramayan_. I think. I'm actually not quite sure. There's differences in the imagery that I don't recognize." He glanced into the commander's face and didn't see comprehension. He looked away again, regarding the naga statue once more. "One of the great Hindu epics."

"Right, like the Vedas." Those he knew. Most SF soldiers were far better educated than people realized, Tuck himself no exception. Dealing with Pendergast could still be a challenge.

"Just so. You do feel it, yes?"

A flush of irritation began to spread on Tuck's face, an instinctual response to dealing with the unusual. "Pendergast, what-"

The words came, again in dead stone. "We don't belong here."

Tuchman unconsciously shifted his weight, at a loss as to whether Pendergast meant the temple – or Cambodia entire. Regardless of the answer, his stomach knotted in quiet agreement. He set his jaw, showing the red frustration of command instead.

Pendergast leaned slightly towards him, searching his face and then abruptly offering a wry, self-deprecating smile. "Quite sorry. I shouldn't have wandered off without further explanation." He slid easily off the altar with a cat-quick stretch and began to stride past Tuchman.

Tuchman put a hand up to stop him. "How the fuck did you even know this place was here?"

"I smelled it." A brief, meaningless smile.

Tuck shook his head in disbelief and quickly followed the sergeant back to the group.


	17. Chapter 17

17.

On the fourth day, their pace slowed against not only the knotting whorl of the jungle, but against large stretches of artificially cleared space. Engineering Sergeant Dustin Dickens crawled along the edges of the first of these they found, suspicions immediately raised and almost as immediately confirmed. Landmines. Possibly dozens of them. They stuck to jungle instead, the Pixie Dust Twins taking point and watching their feet for a thousand different ways for man to set a fatal trap. Whatever lay northwest of them, it was increasingly well guarded. The ODA marched in grim silence, concentrating on the exhausting work of not getting killed by a single careless footstep.

. . .

The landscape began to change; the jungle experienced more straight-edged clear cut zones, trails left in the mud and grass to tell tales of logs being hauled somewhere else. With less cover and more potential zones for mines, they slowed even further. Tuchman began to consider calling for the double-back. He'd seen enough to suggest at least caution and further investigation before politicians back home dismissed the rest of the rumors outright. The terrain was growing dangerous; mercurial and touched by violent men. Tuck had enlisted during the height of Vietnam's guerrilla war and crawled his way to command through ability, persistence, and a great many dead soldiers. Enough of them to know when not to overpay and risk a single soldier too many. Enough to remember its harshest lessons for troops – one of them being the cold reminder that they faced men born to the region. His men were only transient, adaptable learners.

 _We don't belong here_. The thought echoed in his mind, gnawing at him.

His squad was too young, talented, and valuable to risk on pushing this Recon further than operational limits. By noon, his conviction was in place. They would make it half a kilometer to the lee of a series of low hills, then begin to plot their route back to the extraction zone to wait for Jameson, should he not already have led his squad back as well.

Commander Ryland Tuchman had his moment of conviction less than an hour too late.

. . .

As the hills drew closer, a flurry of rocks flew from the depths of jungle into the latest minefield the squad was carefully skirting. Enough connected with half-buried ordinance to create a small chain-flash of smoke and fire ten meters away from the men.

They instantly dropped hard onto the ground and crawled into better cover deeper in the jungle line. Deustch took point, scanning quickly for enemies and shooting with careful, controlled bursts at a glimmer of movement behind a palm tree. Flecks of fresh, clean wood flew through the air and the weapons sergeant dropped to alter his positioning to avoid letting the enemy fixate on him. "At least nine, top tree line!" he hissed over his shoulder.

He wasn't alone in going on the offensive. Pendergast stayed on the medic's six to cover him, aiming carefully down his sights at a black figure high up a jungle slope. He waited less than a second to be sure his shot was true, then snapped a fatal burst at the man. He fell with a distant cry and Pendergast immediately shoved Bhatt further into a defensive position while he looked for the next target.

Ivan had his gun in one hand and the mic of his long-wave in the other, working hard at getting a signal. While they couldn't call for emergency extraction this far into a country they were not supposed to be in, it was necessary to alert the other ODA squad and get a message down the network. Static met his attempts; not unusual. He continued to message out at fifteen second intervals, looking for response.

Tuck and Dickens covered the flank, Dickens crawling fast along rolling, mossy earth to try and track a path out of the firefight. He yelled for his commander to verify a route that provided rocky cover east away from the enemies. Tuck took his gaze off the high tree line for a quick moment, dropping low to twist his head and assess Dickens' find.

A loud spatter of bullets closer than the rest rattled out and most of Ryland Tuchman's face sheared away. _We don't belong here_ , hung the words in a shattered, lipless mouth. He slowly pitched the rest of the way down to the wet, waiting earth, dead less than a second later.

The squad never paused. Pendergast barked an order to follow the engineer, taking the only chance they had to escape and regroup. It would be impossible to take Tuck's body with them as they fled and each man stepped over it, saving emotions for later.

As they began to snake away, another burst of approaching fire connected with the group. Ivan's radio-laden pack took the brunt of it, the man himself snarling off the single grazing shot that struck his left arm. A quick glance told him it was going to take much longer to get the hardware operational than he had time for and he exacted personal revenge by snapping several shots back in the direction of the assault. Something connected; another harsh cry and the sounds of someone toppling.

They moved without stopping, returning fire only when feasible and followed the terrain in a looping path that turned away from the east and into deeper jungle. They spoke only to mark out targets that drew too close to the group – far more now in the trees than the nine Deustch first identified. They parceled their targets carefully; the limits of the recon preparation meaning more tools and food than ammunition, but where one Khmer warrior fell, another popped up almost instantly to take his place in the firefight.

. . .

Pendergast, now in charge, tried to spot an alternating path that would strike back in any other direction instead. He had begun to get the crawling feeling that they were not escaping – they were being _herded_. Waited out. As their enemies increased, the gunfire didn't. He began to calculate odds and didn't like any of them. Malik Bhatt caught the look on his face on a quick glance over his shoulder and visibly paled. He didn't stop moving.

Ahead of them crackled the sound of another half-dozen small explosions. Another minefield, this one buried amidst trees and stone. Dickens swore once and waved the team off. A single shot rang out, tore a hole through the meat of his uplifted arm. Deustch gargled an enraged scream and put a round through the face of the shooter, barely avoiding another salvo himself. Pendergast grabbed Deustch on the shoulder and shoved him hard after Dickens, who was trying to one-handedly knot a piece of torn fabric above the wound while still struggling along the path. Malik caught up to him and wound the tourniquet tighter than he could do alone.

The medic's work was almost instantly undone when a flurry of black uniforms flowed across the jungle ahead of them. The squad began to duck for what cover they could find, but Dickens was slowed just barely enough by pain. He took a massive blast to the chest and sat down heavily. "Sorry, guys," he rasped. "I fucked up." The light went out of his eyes and he gaped down at his lap.

Pendergast kept an iron grip on Deustch, whose eyes had gone wide and blank with rage.

" _G. I!_ " A chant began to go up, coming from everywhere in the trees – above, beyond, behind. It seemed to come from the rocks and echoed off the ground. " _G. I!_ " The remaining members of the squad formed a huddle, loading the last of their ammunition.

" _Give up, G. I!_ " A handful of men flowed closer.

"Do we?" rumbled Ivan, the sound of the words rattling low in his thick chest. He knew the expected answer, prepared for it with a swell of vicious pride.

"Absolutely _not,_ " said Pendergast, teeth bared in open fury. He lifted his rifle and put one of his remaining shots clean through one of the approaching men, racketed another round into position.

. . .

It was over within five more minutes. They took every shot they could and made them count, the toll for their last stand marking at least six more dead enemies. Ten more poured from the jungle behind them at the first empty click of a gun, whaling at the soldiers with everything they had. Ivan wrapped burly fingers around the throat of one but was clubbed from behind. He still nearly managed to strangle his opponent before blacking out, the Cambodian soldier rasping for new air and weakly backhanding his now-still attacker anyway.

Beaten into unconsciousness, four remaining soldiers were restrained and slung heavily onto improvised litters, taken to the prison at nearby Tlork. Tuchman's squad was going to complete the final leg of their official reconnaissance tour after all.


	18. Chapter 18

18.

Sergeant A.X.L Pendergast woke all at once, ignoring the heavy thumping of his head. He assessed what he could without moving or opening his eyes – hands bound, feet bound, slung onto a moving pole like a tenderized rotisserie chicken. He was deeply bruised in a dozen different places and at least three ribs felt hammered to the very marrow, but nothing bled seriously and nothing broke. He cracked his eyes very slightly, sharp daylight piercing into them. He caught the booted foot of another soldier in the same strung-up position as he – Ivan, likely, by the size of it.

Short grass passed by beneath him, trampled down by smaller feet in shiny black boots that wavered in and out of his sight. He took a risk and opened his eyes further, moving his head very slightly to get a better glimpse of his location.

He was being carried through a deceptively beautiful courtyard. It was lined by tall, healthy palms that fluttered in a high, cooling breeze. The smells of jasmine and pineapple lingered, brought in from somewhere outside the facility. There was another smell underneath that; one of decomposition and acrid fear.

Surrounding the courtyard were the white stone walls of a large, fairly modern building that could have once been an office or, more likely, a practical-looking hotel. On each window from the ground floor and up were strong iron bars that belied the pleasant exterior and Cambodian soldiers patrolled the balconies, looking into each room-turned-cell with a stone face. And it was silent. Pendergast could see shadows in some of the rooms, yet none of them moved. No one spoke. He lidded his eyes again, waiting for a change in circumstances.

Behind him, a low thick groan told him that Deustch had woken up, too groggy to avoid giving himself away. A soldier barked something in Khmer and Pendergast listened to the creak of the bamboo pole behind. The dull sound of slapping was unmistakable – Deustch was being greeted roughly. There was nothing he could do. Pendergast hung his head limply, mimicking his prior deep unconsciousness.

. . .

They were carried through the main entrance and down a narrow staircase. Pendergast cracked his eyes open again. Below, lit by ancient, humming lights, were more cells with thin, inch-long gaps along the top of the back wall to let a laughable amount of outside air in. These were narrower than the rooms above; thick concrete construction separated each small segment and each held its own crude steel-cage door. His eyes adjusted to the dim, softly-swinging lights and saw heavy, rusting bolts in each cell's floor. In some, he saw what they were for. Prisoners were chained down, trapped in a kneeling position on stained concrete floor, eyes cast down. They didn't move nor speak as the new prisoners were carried by.

Other cells were empty, and some were packed tight with several prisoners each. Despite the room available even right in the next cage, three or four people stood stone-still in the same five-foot square space.

They passed by one of these with a single anomaly – a skeletal woman was leaning hard against the bars of her door, unblinking eyes seeming to follow the new arrivals. Pendergast's carriers paused outside an empty cell almost across from hers. He heard the threatening sounds of clubs and chains. As he was dropped unceremoniously to the floor and the pole slid free, he shoved hard against one of his captors, cracking him back against the wall. He knew he wasn't going to get anywhere, but damned if he was going in easy. He heard a laugh from behind him and a club thumped hard into his shin and then his side. Hands grabbed for him, pulled him into the cell and forced him to his knees, where they chained him. More laughter – the only sound - echoed in the hall as the other three were also put into their own cell.

He controlled his breathing, calming himself down and lifted his head to examine his chain and his door. Unlike the bolt, the chain was darkly polished iron; not a speck of rust. The door was made of thick poles of rebar, and he knew it would creak with every movement. He leaned forward as much as he could and swung his gaze to check on his squadmates. Ivan and Malik were clearly visible across; next to him he could hear Deustch breathing heavily. A heavy club clanked into his door before he could get more than the barest glimpse, inches away from his nose. "Back and stay quiet, G.I. No move. No talk." Another hard clank. He leaned back into position, assured the other three were still alive. He tilted his head slightly to examine the woman who had watched them arrive and felt something cold settle deep in his stomach.

She had not watched. She could not see. She was long-dead.

. . .

The Khmer left her there against the bars for three days. When they pulled her stiff form free, fragments of flesh from her arms and hands tore away and stuck to the iron. They curled and rotted slowly in the hot, wet air.

There were four other deaths among the basement prisoners during that slow time, and five were taken away to a grimly quiet room at the end of the hall to be brought back hours later. The soldiers watched each go by with stoic expressions. There were no screams from that room after the door closed. Once there was a shuddering, soft whimper. But never screams. The punishment for any Cambodian screaming would be immediate and severe.

. . .

It was a week before someone came down to speak to the imprisoned soldiers. In that time, they ate once a day, each man watched by half a dozen armed Khmer Rouge while they were fed a spoonful of rice and a shallow, palm-sized bowl of some weak broth. After the seventh meal, given early in the morning, one man stepped forward.

He was small and slim, dark eyes giving nothing away. His black uniform was immaculate and he had an empty, meaninglessly pleasant smile on his face. He broke the silence of the prison with a low baritone voice. "Gentlemen. Who is in charge?"

No one responded at first. The Khmer man turned his head and gave a sharp nod. Other soldiers began to bang on a dozen rebar doors, the sounds echoing through the hall. After a week of constant near-silence, the chaos resounded like a battle in hell. After the sound faded away, he asked the question again, and again, no response. More banging ensued, louder and longer. In its wake there was a single shrill cry of pain from far down the hall followed by the sounds of a beating.

"Silence, but for my answer!" roared the Khmer man. He repeated his roar in his own language, angrier.

Pendergast lifted his head very slightly. "I am," he said in a hoarse, thirsty whisper.

"Very good, sir." The man fixed his dark gaze on him. "Name, rank, serial?"

He gave them, as the military code of conduct allowed.

"Very good." He seemed pleased, the anger melting away like mercury. He turned in the hallway and gestured to his men. "Take the littler one." He gestured at the cell that held Malik Bhatt, then turned back to Pendergast. "We will speak later. Perhaps this one will say good things about you."

Pendergast strained against his chains and forced himself forward in protest, but there was nothing he could do.

. . .

After darkness began to filter in through the cracks in the cells, Pendergast heard Bhatt give in and begin to scream in the grim room down the hall. And scream.

In the morning, Bhatt was returned to his cage. His eyes were empty and blood coated his uniform and his mouth. He didn't speak, made no more sounds. Watching him try and fail to eat later in the day told Pendergast why.

They had taken the medic's tongue.


	19. Chapter 19

19.

Ivan's arm was infected. The small graze sustained in the firefight had long since begun to suppurate, adding a new, fresh layer of rot to the air. Three days after Malik's violent interview, the big comms sergeant stopped eating. Pendergast watched fevered sweat drip from his face, fat plops of hot liquid hitting the cement. It was almost unbelievable to see; the stocky bear of a man once known to his team and his friends to be nearly unstoppable now withering into himself. Ivan fell into delirium in near-silence, occasionally whispering to himself in raspy Russian. Between guard patrols, Pendergast hissed as loud as he dared at the man, trying to order him to eat. Deustch took his turn and wheedled him to look either man across the thin hallway in the eye. Malik was already all but gone – he watched his companions try to fight with with Ivan with an empty face.

Deustch was taken before dawn one morning; he struggled as best he could but ended up dragged face-down through the corridor. As each day passed, their strength to fight back weakened. He was returned in less than an hour, his face confused and eyes wide as he stole a glance at Pendergast.

"Just took my picture. All they did," he whispered into the hallway when the guards were gone. "Sat me in a chair like a fucking Sears portrait." Malik stared back at him, not really seeing. "This is a goddamn horrorshow, Pen."

Pendergast had nothing to say to that.

. . .

They lost track of hours when heavy rainstorms made day and night indistinguishable in the cells. Patrols could be any time, and feeding schedules were changed, seemingly to take advantage of the confusion. One day they were fed three times. Another time, perhaps not at all. Hunger and silence made it hard to say. Water seeped in, carrying fetid smells from other parts of the facility and drying with dark, muddy stains. Then, sometime after the sun broke through again, they came for Pendergast. He didn't bother to fight – let them be confused by timidity and he could save his energy for better purpose. What little he could gather.

. . .

"Put him in the chair. Gently, please." The same small, slim man greeted the prisoner, hands clasped authoritatively behind his back. "I am Brother Louis."

Pendergast fought an absurd temptation to laugh, the name grandiose and ill-fitting to the little man. Instead he took in the surprisingly cold, air-controlled room as best as he was capable before being restrained in the central chair. He saw a small, dirty table loaded with crude farm tools and coils of wire and considered them with morbid interest. One set of wires led to a battery and he could hear the faint hum of electricity emanating from it. Next to it were pliers of various sizes and his mind questioned which of them had done the deed on Malik. The fantasy of someday, somehow making one of the Rouge eat them was privately comforting.

Once seated and firmly restrained, he saw the vast, old cauldron filled with ice-laden water, the boards with nails lining the walls, the hanging whips. He shut himself down as firmly as the SERE program taught him – a more in-depth return to Tibetan monasteries still ahead in a future he couldn't foresee – and waited to see how they would begin.

"I see you looking at our tools. Don't worry. We should not need them." Brother Louis smiled warmly down at the tied soldier. "My questions are simple. I have too much respect for the Americans to behave needlessly, unlike whatever poor, confused soul sent you young men here." He shook his head. "Truly, they misjudged your worth."

Standard ego-controlling opening tactics. Pendergast said nothing, suspecting things were going to get dire in a hurry.

"It would be a shame to find out how foolish your commanders' decisions truly are." A dark eyebrow arched. "Are there others here in our country? Another squad? Do you work with the Vietnamese?"

He kept his silence.

"Oh, don't be like that. If you have others, perhaps they've gone home and the matter is moot. Troubling that your team could not go with them." Louis shrugged. "Photograph him now, please." He snapped his fingers at a figure beyond the black-uniformed guards.

The photographer stepped forward, a massive camera in his hands. He never looked directly at the prisoner, only down into his view to ensure the picture would be framed evenly. He worked quickly, took one snap only and then stepped back, saluting Brother Louis with a low, nervous bob of his head. "Thank you, that is excellent. Go, if you would."

Louis ignored the photographer's departure. "I've sent photos on of two of your companions, though I notice your third needs some little time yet before we can effectively document him. Our commanders send word to yours. Nothing comes back. Perhaps they have forgotten about you?" A nearly comical expression of distress appeared on his face. "Such a shame. A word of concern and of course we would send you home." He leaned in and beamed into Pendergast's face. "We are not animals."

He stepped away again. "But meanwhile, you do not belong here." The words echoed coldly. "Let's try again. Perhaps it was how I phrased it; I should be more gentle, one leader of men to another." Amiable again. "Are there other Americans here in our country, sir?"

Silence.

"Military men? _Skulking_ around our beloved people, sent like rats into a barn?" Louis crossed his arms, frowned in the quiet. "Oh, dear." He snapped his hand out, palm flat, and slapped Pendergast hard across the face. "Let's not be like this." He frowned at the lack of reaction, then exhaled a single deep sigh. "Don't you want a little rest? It's unpleasant in those cells, I know. We have better rooms for you; a place to stretch and rest until your people ask for you back. All we ask is a little cooperation."

Pendergast said nothing, ignoring a bead of blood that formed at the corner of his lip. He stared fixedly at the door.

Louis looked down at the soldier regretfully for a long moment, then backhanded him hard across the right cheek. Still nothing. He stepped back and nodded to someone. Behind Pendergast, metal clanked.

"No, no." The hand that slapped him waved another off, frustrated. "Too much. I want him tractable." He gestured at something else. "Yes. That will do." He smiled down at Pendergast. "I will go for some tea. When I come back, we will start over."

Pendergast watched Brother Louis' back disappear down the hall before one of the other men in black sealed the door. He could smell the sharp, acrid scent of the car battery, heard the sound of thick rubber gloves being slipped on. He steeled himself and waited for the first electric lash.

. . .

He did not scream.

He _would not_ scream.

. . .

Brother Louis looked down at the tall, pale man, short hair hanging limply against his face with dour satisfaction. "May we speak now?"

Low, hard breathing answered him. The soldier didn't look up.

"Were your six men alone? How did you arrive? By what border? Simple questions, sir!" He nodded sharply at his main torturer. A bucket of icy cold water was dumped over Pendergast's head. He didn't even shiver. Louis slapped him again, even harder yet, then snorted and snapped his fingers.

Already damp rags were wrapped around the sergeant's face. More water poured over him; icy cold and dripping unpredictably. It was impossible to avoid gasping for air, impossible to hold out for more than bare seconds without fighting against the chair in desperation.

But he would not scream.

They let him breathe for a few moments.

Again. And again.

Louis peeled away the rags and frowned into the haggard face. "Let him dry, then try the wire again."

. . .

It repeated until hours were lost in pain. Pendergast gave nothing, except to repeat his name once. Brother Louis ordered him to be taken back to his cell, showing no frustration. Instead, he seemed oddly pleased with the day's results.

Pendergast made it most of the way without staggering, though he went down hard when chained again to the eye bolt in the floor. The guards stood in front of his door for a little while, not looking at him and conversing with each other in rapid Khmer. They gestured at Ivan's cell instead. A clatter of metal began to rattle the halls. Deustch was breathing hard in the next cell, the sound underlined by a quiet rattle in his chest.

He mustered his energy and raised his head to look. The big man was slumped over, his face waxy. Despite himself, Pendergast uttered a tiny, rattling wheeze of despair. It was lost in the moist, rasping sounds of the guards dragging the corpse from the cell and out of sight.

"You fuckers." Deustch wasn't bothering to whisper, but lack of nutrition added a dead layer of exhaustion to his voice. "You fuckers. You _fuckers_!" The last came out in a reedy, mournful wail, ending in a flurry of coughing.

The guards laughed. In the distance, though he could not quite be sure, Pendergast thought he heard the faint _snap_ of the photographer at work once more.


	20. Chapter 20

20.

Malik died the next day.

Guards rinsed his cell out with half-hearted effort, buckets of dirty water leaving the cement darker than it had been. They took Deustch away, then brought him back after a couple of hours, face bruised and bleeding. They put him in the newly empty cell across from Pendergast. They looked at each other, not speaking. Deustch's dirt-stained face was marked by thin trails where tears had dripped him clean. _I didn't tell them anything_ , he mouthed. He looked as bewildered as a puppy.

Pendergast nodded as comfortingly as he could manage, wishing for one lone moment that he was better at such things. It was the only thing he could do for the last soldier under his tenuous command. It seemed to help anyway; Deustch fought tears for a while and then slept.

Their captors came for Pendergast again as the other man dozed. He went quietly, hoping that the activity would not wake him.

. . .

He refused to scream.

They were inventive, but he would not scream. Not even when they inverted him and he found out what the boards with the nails hammered into them were for.

. . .

Later, as he still hung, his back became a field of red, thorned grass, and though he could not see through the thick woolen blindfold, he felt every ragged line whipped into place. For him, they poured antiseptic on the wounds. It lit up the marks like napalm fire, but it also told him they considered him at least minimally valuable for now. He could not embrace the idea with full gratitude. It gave him time to hope for a way out to present itself, yes, and promised more time to suffer. He had no way to know how long that would be. That uncertainty could hurt more than the damage in the long run; wounds would heal, but a thousand dire possibilities burrowed deep into a tired brain. Meanwhile, he let hate feed him what little energy it could. It tasted bitterly better than the dry, flavorless rice they were still given.

Now Brother Louis grew openly irritated with him. He reminded Pendergast of his duty to the other soldier, suggested that if Pendergast did not fully co-operate, it would be Deustch that would feel the next round of punishment.

 _That_ stung. Resolution did not break, but it wavered very slightly under moral conflict. He could survive this – he still believed that was a possibility, refused to entertain the idea of giving up – but he realized Deustch had begun to crack as soon as he'd watched Dickens die. It was also Pendergast's duty to avoid any action that might do harm to a fellow soldier – but at the same time, priority was to support _all_ soldiers and remain steadfast, not just the one trapped with him. Not just the one regressing into the permanent, primal terror of childhood.

They returned him to his cell, reeking of rubbing alcohol and rusting metal.

. . .

Deustch screamed enough for them both.

Pendergast helplessly watched him be placed in his cell again after eight hours in the grim room. They gave Deustch an insultingly small cup of water to drink and then left him alone, exhausted to the edge of his ability and bleeding from the chest in several places. He wheezed hard with eyes shut in pain and the sound seeming to rattle through his entire chest. After a while, he managed to lift his head and gave Pendergast a weak, forgiving smile that was meant to absolve him of any blame.

That made it worse.

. . .

Unknown time passed; hours and days blended into the demarcation of when there was pain given and the hot, aching hours of when there was not. Wounds were granted and slowly healed; ribs bruised, faces battered, fingers torn up by small, adept hands well-practiced with pliers. In that slow, dark space the questions were asked less and less. There was only the torture, for torture's sake. The suffering. And the pleasant, empty smiles of their tormentors.

. . .

Pendergast woke sharply out of a light, dreamless sleep to see booted feet standing in the hall before him. He swallowed a little, feeling it click in a dry throat. He pulled his fading energy together in what armor he could bring to bear.

"Good morning, sir," purred the voice of Brother Louis. "I regret to inform you that we have been unable to make any useful contact with your people. A true shame."

He lifted his head to give his tormenter an exhausted, studying look.

Louis looked back at him, his expression that of a man bored. "Your usefulness has been greatly overestimated and your executions have been commanded. You will be taken with the next group. I bid you adieu, sir." He dropped a curt nod, turned sharply, and left without a second look back.

Deustch began to cry again. "Oh, thank God."

Pendergast felt cold and very, very alone.


	21. Chapter 21

21.

Two mornings later, the two soldiers were roughly pulled to their feet and shoved down the hall in line amidst a dozen others from the long basement. The line moved slowly, Deustch shivering wordlessly when they stood in front of the closed door of the torturer's room for what seemed like forever. Pendergast watched both the group and the soldiers; two worlds that never crossed except to deliver pain. There was a leaden deadness in the air, his fellow prisoners in their final hours moving like silent zombies. Perhaps, like Deustch, they were simply ready for it to end.

Pendergast could not find it in himself to give up yet. It tempted; he hurt in ways that could never have been fully prepared for. Ribs felt as if they nearly rubbed against each other in the early stages of real starvation and if he had seen a mirror, he would not have liked the look in his eyes. But he was still _alive_ , and until the finality of real hopelessness settled in, he was going to try to stay that way. They were out of the cells. That was something.

He held onto that idea like a rope, and he would drag Deustch along it with him any way he could.

. . .

They were sealed into trucks, a dozen guards to each and now the crowd to be executed swelled to perhaps a hundred, all from different floors of the facility. There was no discrimination; men were piled in with women, and some women held tiny, fragile children as best as they could. Other children walked into the trucks by themselves, defiant in their remaining strength. The trucks were fully enclosed, swaddled in metal and dark fabric and all Pendergast knew was that the journey was far, far too short. Perhaps two kilometers, maybe not even that. He supposed there was something to be thankful for, in that they were not marched. He held onto the last vestiges of his energy, watching for any chance.

The trucks emptied out along the edge of a vast field peppered here and there with healthy, thick trees with stained trunks. The field itself was already disturbed; old piles of dirt covered long troughs and mounds and new, open trenches waited for their final deliveries. Like the prison's courtyard, it held a monstrous, serene beauty and the air was thick with fruit and the ever-coiling smell of the green jungle that flowed all around the edges of the field.

The Khmer Rouge soldiers lined them up, confident in their exhaustion. An order went out – _children first_ – and some of the soldiers shouldered their weapons. They roamed the line, tore the smallest children away from their withered families and took them towards the trees.

"Don't look," muttered Pendergast to Deustch, who complied with the order with a soft, defeated whimper. He himself watched every one. And the soldiers laughed – some of it forced, afraid as much of each other as perhaps some of their prisoners. He held no sympathy for that.

Pendergast had long since come to a perfect hate for the soldiers, and now it burned again as the broken children were dumped into the trenches. He fed on it, a glimmer lighting in his face. He could turn and fight, perhaps kill one or two of them. Not enough to make a difference, just enough to say he went down struggling. It would be better to get out, to say that he'd seen what the Khmer did to its people. He looked around, stared at treelines and thought about the chances. Thought about how he'd probably have to carry Deustch somehow, that he didn't know how close any ghostly, unmapped villages were to try for a handful of supplies. That it was very likely he'd simply die from exposure and exhaustion, kilometers away from the Vietnam border.

There was still an achingly-slim chance; the first since the firefight at the edge of a minefield. A chance that, at the very damned least, they could die free.

When a man, down at the very far end of the killing field gave in to mortal terror and began to utter a high, spiraling scream, Pendergast took that chance.

. . .

As the three closest soldiers turned towards the far end of the line, Pendergast snaked out an arm with as much iron power as he could manage and dragged a hobbling, stunned Deustch after him as he broke and fled for the nearest treeline.

The act of open defiance bought him an extra precious few seconds as the soldiers loitered, confused as to orders and openly stunned as to how anyone had energy left to flee. He refused to pause, even as Deustch stumbled and slammed his side hard into a tree. He redoubled his grasp on the other man's arm, pulling him back upright and used as much pure adrenaline as he could to stretch the gap between them and the edge of the field. Behind them, he heard the shouts finally begin in earnest. A handful would be sent after them, he figured; what could be spared while allowing enough men remaining to keep control of the execution.

Gunfire tore the sky instead, a ceaseless rattle that echoed against the trees. When it faded, shouts replaced the chaos.

"Oh my God," moaned Deustch, his voice hollow. He was trying to resist Pendergast's grip. "They just shot them all. They're _all_ going to come for us."

"Keep moving." Pendergast was stuck in relentless drive. "Don't think. Just move."

"We can't make it. Please, just let us die." His voice broke on the last word.

Pendergast whirled on him, taking less than a second to grab into Deustch's thinning arms with two clawed, furious hands. " _Never_!" he snarled into the man's face. His eyes were full of terrifying, unstoppable silver fire and Deustch openly stared, more afraid now of the gaunt horror that held him than the soldiers that were about to give chase.

The hands lessened their grip slightly, even as the tugging continued, merciless. Deustch moved, robotic, trying to keep pace.


	22. Chapter 22

22.

If fate had been cruel for interminable weeks, it at last granted a single diamond glitter of hope. Pendergast's unstoppable march south stretched the gap between hares and hounds as hours passed. Several times the crack of gunfire snapped too close to their position. He couldn't keep Deustch from yelping with terror each time this occurred, but at least the man didn't stop moving. By dusk, the gunfire began to fade into kilometers worth of distance.

Pendergast didn't allow either of them to stop and savor the start of bitter triumph, but he did permit the pace to slow very slightly. He didn't like the rattle in Deustch's breath, and he had spent nearly all the energy he'd been able to muster on that first, desperate rush. Slowing gave him time to consider their terrain; retrain his senses to examine the open world and find a path that could perhaps save them.

. . .

He struck gold well after dark, his nose picking up the distant smell of metal and standing water – the combination suggesting buildings and some disused primitive well. Pendergast led them both through winding terrain that threatened to crack undernourished legs at any chance, finding exactly what he'd hoped for. Another empty, forgotten village; drained of life by the relentless scouring of the Rouge. In the third home that he searched, he found a bag of ancient rice that had mostly seemed to avoid moisture and mold. In the next, a couple of cans of mysterious food complete with an opener.

A fire would be too risky. They would try their luck with the canned food for now. He pulled Deustch into one of the central homes, a little shack with a crude trapdoor leading out below the home. The idea of an extra escape route gave him a vestigial sense of comfort.

The first can he opened contained some rich vegetable paste – not tomato, some strange smear of peppers instead. The next was preserved mango. It smelled like heaven and for the first time, Pendergast very nearly wept. He parceled out a few bites for each of them carefully, knowing that food too richly flavored would be rejected by their bodies for some time. Deustch barely ate what he was given anyway, despite Pendergast's insistence. After, Deustch collapsed into a heap in the furthest corner of the shack, falling into sleep with a wheezy, increasingly consumptive rasp.

Pendergast managed a little sleep as well, stretched out for the first time since entering Cambodia. Only a little; he woke with a start well before dawn and gave Deustch more time to rest while he went to scout. He hunkered in the shadow of the doorway for a while, waiting for the light, listening for anything or anyone that might approach. Then he skulked out to look for more food in the other homes and came up empty. A daylight examination of the bag of rice he'd found dashed hopes of taking that as well – the mold was far more extensive than he'd thought and they would have to leave it. Mold on rice was too likely to be toxic, and he wasn't about to chance their tiny thread of hope on eating it. They would have to spread out the little tins of fruit and paste as best as they could, and perhaps scavenge more from the jungle.

Meanwhile, slow suspicions were becoming confirmed. Deustch had been fighting sickness for some time. Now, running in the jungle, he was openly deteriorating. His best chance would be to make it to the border in time for effective treatment.

. . .

The main road of Svay Rieng province swung nearer to the dead village than Pendergast liked; but at least knowing where it was gave him a fixed position to figure the closest way out of the country. He held the map of Cambodia in his mind; their best chance was a three to four day march – depending on their condition – south-southeast. There was a checkpoint too close to the east, according to the briefings they'd been given forever ago. They would have to avoid that as widely as possible.

Although, he considered with bitter sarcasm, the briefings had been so accurate about everything else going on in the damned country.

. . .

Deustch slept hard till the sun was high above, woke up at last with a coughing fit that Pendergast did his best to soothe with still-cool cups of water. The village well was neglected and mossy, a friend to malarial insects, but clean enough. Deustch fought against being treated and he looked even more exhausted than he had when bedding down the night before. They still prepared to journey.

Pendergast fought to keep the worry off his face, unable to stop thinking of Ivan and how the once unstoppable brick had simply slumped over in his cage. Deustch had effectively given up weeks ago. It was up to him to keep the smaller man going, try to get him wanting to live. He had no idea how. All he knew how to do was to keep moving, like a shark working against the fraying edges of a net. All he could do was drag Deustch along on a final march and hope.

He fed them both again when dusk drew close, Deustch nearly choking on the tiny fragments of mango. He waved away the cup of water when Pendergast offered it, driving the sergeant to the edge of frustration. Finally he took a tiny sip, probably more to avoid another one of Pendergast's grim looks than anything else.

. . .

The cans only lasted them another couple of meals, and the route Pendergast had found to take offered very little in the way of scavengeable sustenance. Water was less difficult to acquire in deep jungle but otherwise, the likelihood of them both dying within tangible reach of the border crossed his mind again. This time it squatted for a while, making itself comfy with the private allure of no longer having to fight.

Deustch didn't seem to care. From time to time he talked about random things in his life in a toneless monologue. Movies he'd seen, girls he'd dated. His first mission with Dickens, not long before Pendergast had been assigned to the ODA. Wisps of shared missions with Tuck and the rest. Some half-remembered childhood memory of playing board games with his cousin melded into the first time he'd visited his father's office at the Senate. Pendergast hadn't known who Deustch's family was; he had never asked, treating the topic of other families with the same distanced aversion he gave his own. He let Deustch talk anyway, trying not to think about the feverish delirium that drove it.

. . .

On the third day, Pendergast was forced to begin carrying Deustch. The scattered but coherent rambling had given away to real madness. The words the other man spoke had nothing to do with any language either of them knew, and he was soaking hot to the touch. At regular intervals, Pendergast tried to force water down his throat, usually succeeding only the barest bit. It was a dire turn, one that guaranteed to slow them down severely.

Now and again his coldest survival instincts cut in – _leave him, he's gone away, use your energy to take care of yourself_ – and he shut them down. There was logic there, but he'd seen enough. He was getting this one home, no matter what it cost.

He marched, at one point his own confused exhaustion leading them too close to the edge of a bog that sucked away one of his boots – the ankle within too thin to keep it in place, much less leverage it back out. He took a replacement from Deustch, under the tired logic that he wasn't walking for himself anymore anyway.

They had to be getting close. There couldn't be much further to go.

. . .

Like in the prison, hours slipped away again as Pendergast simply kept moving. He fixated himself on the course he was sure they needed to go, put himself on autopilot and let 'himself' just go away for a little while to let his mind rest. During the few times he brought himself to the present he listened to Deustch make soft sounds. There was no more food. Deustch would no longer drink, no matter what he tried. He just sat there, watching Pendergast with a glassy expression. Pendergast wouldn't look back.

When he could muster strength again, he slung the man, now little more than too-thin dead weight, across his shoulders.

. . .

Pendergast came to at the edge of a surprisingly well-cared-for road, startled and suddenly unsure of his location. He kept to the trees, cradled Deustch to comfort him and watched for traffic. None came for a long time. He didn't want to move until he knew whether the Khmer took this road or not. It would be helpful to follow it if they didn't, but he simply knew nothing. Including, at this point, where the hell he was. He regarded it as a personal failure, angry with himself and unwilling to accept the excuse of being exhausted to the point of total mortal breakage.

It took nearly an hour for a vehicle to appear in the distance. He squinted against the sun, then uttered a sharp sound, gripping Deustch's shoulder.

The vehicle was American; one of thousands of jeeps given to or left behind with Vietnamese allies across the country in the wake of the long war. It looked new and well cared for.

He took one more chance and dragged Deustch with him into the road, flagging down the vehicle. It stopped, motor ticking, a dozen yards away. A stunned-looking figure slipped out of the driver's side and stood next to the jeep, watching the pair.

"Where are we?" Pendergast asked, realizing how harsh and ruined his voice sounded at a normal speaking volume.

The man took a cautious step forward. "Tay Ninh, G. I. You a long fucking way from home."

They truly were in Vietnam. When had they crossed the border? He had no idea. His usually reliable memories were for now buried deep in lost time; spent on surviving a nearly impossible march. "That is a vast understatement," he rasped. "Please help us."

"Us?" The man swallowed, took another step forward. He rubbed his hands together apologetically. "I'm sorry, sir, please, but... your friend is very dead. Look like he been that way a while."

That wasn't true; he'd still been making sounds, still looking him the eye. Wasn't it? Pendergast swallowed hard and looked down at his cargo.

No. It was true. There was nothing in the glassy eyes.

He wiped a filthy hand across his dry face, gave a shuddering sigh and sank heavily onto the road. There was nothing left to fight for. "Please help."

The man nodded and reached into the back of the vehicle, pulling out a thick green blanket. To wrap Deustch in, Pendergast realized. He began to laugh to himself, the sound mournful and humorless, ignoring the frightened look the young Vietnamese man shot at him.

They were going home.


	23. Part Three: Garuda

23.

Special Agent Pendergast snapped awake, tensing his body carefully in order to give away nothing of his awakened state in case of observers. He felt no bindings on his wrists, no chains or cuffs, though he had been thoroughly frisked of all his tools and weapons. They had taken his boots as well. He felt soft light through his eyelids, smelled mossy stone and wet wood. There were no approaching sounds, just the soft rustle of fabric not far away. He cracked his eyes open very carefully, ignoring the thumping headache from where the club had struck him the night before.

He was in a cage. The familiarity of the situation ran a tiny shiver along his back, followed by his lips reflexively forming into a brief, bitter grimace. He forced himself to calm and looked again, noting this time not the similarities, but the vast differences.

The floor he laid on was old, crackled-brown stone speckled with moss and shot through with tiny leaves and thin roots. He watched a small sky-blue beetle crawl up through the cracks only inches away from where his head lay on the damp stones; watched it clean its forelegs and then fly off through the thick bamboo-wood rods of the cage door. There was a gap of some few inches between each rod, and the door itself allowed three or four inches of clearance along the bottom. He pushed out his bare foot to nudge the door, noting that it creaked a little where it was crudely hinged to the surrounding walls. On the outside gleamed a new metal padlock. The walls and roof were wet wooden slats lashed together by moldy ropes, jute twine and rotting bungees; scavenged building materials that didn't fit the rest of the surroundings.

He lifted his head for a better look, first saw the half-ruined face of a huge stone _deva_ smiling down on the rickety little prison from across a vast, open space. A temple, then – one of the dozens that still lingered unfound in the jungles. This second familiarity reverberated through his memory and he shook it away. He turned his head slightly and met a third shock – small, coal-dark eyes that bored through his with bright curiosity through the bars of another nearby cage.

Pendergast pulled himself upright, watching the little Cambodian girl press closer to the bars of her cage. She was perhaps six, too skinny in a shift printed with pale pink flowers. She stopped looking at him for a moment to swing her head back and forth, looking around where she could before staring back again. She said something to him in a quiet voice that he couldn't understand and he shook his head; his bare-bones knowledge of Khmer useless when trying to understand dialects far outside of the city. She looked comically frustrated with him.

He lifted a shoulder in an apologetic shrug and tried another tack. "English? _Parlez-vous français_?"

She raised her hand and pinched her fingers together. A tiny bit. Now she looked sheepish.

" _Maman? Mteay_?"

Her face grew serious. " _Shlap_." Dead.

Pendergast nodded. "Siha?"

Her face closed and she stepped back from the bars, no longer looking at him. He sighed, rested his wrist on his knee and examined the cage again. His anger at capture had long since drained, left clinical interest behind instead. The cages were unimpressive, meant more for the containment of exhausted, abused 'toys' than long-term dangerous prisoners. If they'd had any sense, they should have left him for dead in the jungle. He considered that for awhile, bemused by the tactical mistake and contrasting it with the annoying ease of his capture. Then he leaned forward, picking out a handful of distant, huddled shapes in other rotting cages. They didn't move, but now and again he heard the low sounds of fear.

The girl drew close to the bars again, not looking at him. She said something, the low little voice ending on the high spiral of a question; again he didn't understand. Her face furrowed, then tried again in very mangled French – _are you afraid?_

He leaned back, giving the question serious thought. His gaze flicked around what he could see of the old temple, then he closed his eyes and let his memory and his circumstances pick at each other for a brief moment. That done, he considered his contingencies and the possibilities around facts he did not yet have. The girl needed an answer. He preferred to give an honest one.

He arched an eyebrow and opened his eyes again, regarding the girl. He allowed a thin little smile and finally spoke again. "No."

. . .

As the light of the sun deepened and turned to evening orange, the sound of heavy boots slapping against wet stone approached the cages. Pendergast cracked opened one eye and then the other, watching the figure come into view. The girl was shrunk into the back of her cage, not looking at the new arrival.

 _Siha_. Pendergast knew the face from Bopha's works. He was tall for a Cambodian; stripped bare to the waist where a machete hung low in the back from a thick leather belt. Stuck into his waistband was Pendergast's gun. He was well-muscled and deeply scarred, though the black hair was slightly long and shot through with grey. Pendergast examined the scars; large swaths of puckered tissue along arms and shoulders; a patch that looked as if it had been peeled from the abdomen.

"I cut away my tattoos." Siha gave him a wide, predatory smile. His voice was low and easy, rumbling huskily around heavily accented English. "They failed me; dead magic for dead gods. I give them away in ritual for real power." He turned in a slow circle to show more large patches of healed skin along both shoulders. "My brothers follow. We will remake our country with these new ways, forged with the flesh of old."

Pendergast watched him with a neutral expression, not moving from where he leaned back against cool, wet boards.

"Do you not see?" He spread his arms. "We are unfound, unfought. The people do not turn against us. They have been _waiting_."

"I found you." Pendergast closed his eyes again, having taken the measure of the man and finding most of the answers he needed.

"You were _led_." The words came out in a hiss and Pendergast arched an eyebrow without bothering to look at him. He rattled the wood bars of Pendergast's cage, frustrated with the lack of response. "You will see our rituals with your blind eyes. I will rebuild our kingdom!"

Siha slapped the cage one more time. "Try to escape and I'll make the girl suffer instead." He stalked away.

Pendergast heard another shuffle and looked at the girl, once more at the bars of her cage. "Well. He's actually very dull." He tilted his head slightly, giving her a wry smile. "Don't worry."

She looked unconvinced by his sure tone.

. . .

Pendergast rested until well after dark, knowing the moon would be only a sliver high overhead. He wanted more information about his surroundings before committing to a plan, further, he did not doubt that the child's well-being rested on his seeming to behave. So he waited until the distant chorus of Siha's men faded into silence, waited until he heard the low, heavy snore of a nearby guard.

He nudged the door with his toe again, testing the wet creak of the hinges. There was a considerable amount of give due to the decaying construction; easily several extra inches worth of flexibility. He slid down onto his back and turned around in the cage. Getting his head underneath was simple, though the flat bottoms of the bamboo liked to catch against his black shirt. He pushed up, gently, causing no more extra creak than necessary, and slid the rest of the way out. Then he sat up, examining the shiny new lock on the other side.

He heard a tiny gasp behind him, and saw the girl looking at him from the bottom of the cage where she lay. He put a finger to his lips and rose to his bare feet. Then he silently loped away and disappeared into the night.


	24. Chapter 24

24.

Pendergast found most of his gear in a haphazard pile of rubbish not far away from the cages. There was no sign of his small switchblade or the multitool, but the lockpicking kit was there. He put it away again, hiding it in a pocket near his knee after marking which picks would work best on his cage. He also took the little pack of flexible cord, the tablets of charcoal, and a lighter, just in case. The lighter didn't belong to him; it was just a cheap and slightly cracked plastic number left discarded. Probably in favor of his own. The rest of his items could be replaced or taken later.

He looked around in the dark, holding a faint hope that they would have tossed his boots into the trash as well, but no luck. Apparently at least one of Siha's boys had a shoe size close enough to his own to demand an interest in the trophies. He didn't bother with feeling annoyance. He'd have to slip back into the cage barefoot anyway, there wasn't a real point in wearing them meanwhile.

Watching the terrain carefully for broken, sharp stones and sudden drops in the architecture, he moved silently around the compound to scout it.

. . .

The open space that held the cages was near the center of the temple complex, next to it through a series of failing halls was Siha's much vaunted ritual location. A ruined altar marked the center, shattered rubble piled up to hold a stained flat stone that still had some faint carvings left on it. There was a pile of disregarded blankets, most of them filthy and coated with gore. The central concept of Siha's 'rituals' was clear; base rape and murder dressed up with a healthy coating of half-understood symbolism taken from Cambodia's most ancient history. They thrived as long as they did under a system eaten from within by corruption, reinforcing their successes. Pride and charisma did the rest, carrying followers along and creating their own network inside a city still piecing itself together after decades of hell. A cult of death and sex, pulled together with tools left behind from the Rouge, ignored among a thousand other small sorceries in the rural communities.

He slunk along stones stained dark by time and violence, glancing at a pile of small skulls near one of the doorways. They were stripped bare by weather and time; old blood there to observe the new spills. Most of the men slept in rooms off of the central ritual area; two or three to a room lined high with rubble and weapons both scavenged and improvised. A little over twenty men there in that area.

Padding through a hallway with a vaulted ceiling of roots led him to a better-kept space where a guard dozed lightly in a chair. The space was full of collected bits of statues or other artifacts ruined beyond identification, the corners marked by several naga statues in markedly better repair. Those he spared an extra glance for, a memory of faint unease making itself unwelcome. They looked back, impassive in their frozen, arching stare.

A doorway led east, veiled by a mix of heavy curtains and dangling beads. He marked it as almost certainly Siha's private space, slipped away again to get a better idea of the perimeter.

. . .

What he saw pleased him. Pride in their own infallibility kept the outer walls lightly watched and many large cracks and nooks throughout the architecture went ignored. Mostly they relied on broken trees and fallen rubble to block up any other major exits. He found three men near the main entrance to the temple complex, barely awake, wandering around in a set of patrols where the temple ramped out into deep undergrowth. He lounged in a well-shadowed corner, watched two of the three grow bored and chat with each other, lighting cigarettes and telling jokes while the third man disappeared down the narrow trail away from the temple for several minutes before coming back with his pants tugged askew.

Pendergast continued to watch the men while the sky deepened into a rich indigo, then traced his way back to the little prison. On the way, he found the small, open-air kitchen and nicked a mango from its stores, cutting it in half with one of the knives there and disposing of the stone. He left the knife behind exactly as he found it.

He paused by most of the cages as he approached his own, finding three women collapsed into unconscious, exhausted heaps. They didn't stir as he passed. If the men came for any of them while he was still playing prisoner, something would have to be done. He would worry about that possibility later. Another cage held a dead male. Like Siha, he'd had tattoos carved away from his body. However, this one's wounds had festered and led to a painful death. Pendergast suspected the yantra removal had been unwilling, probably some poor poacher or ruin scavenger that got caught up in the cult's nets. He moved on.

The girl was still awake, laying in the same position as when he'd left. Pendergast hunkered down by her bamboo door and slipped half the mango underneath it. Her eyes widened and she snatched it from his hand, devouring it quickly and licking the juice from her fingers. He bit into his half to free his hands and turned to let himself back into his cage with his picks. His fingertips neatly coaxed the lock back into place after he'd slipped inside, pushing it closed with a soft click of metal.

He slid back to the ground, pulled his knees up to his chest and ate the mango with slow contemplation. One way or another, this would end very quickly. Pendergast was unimpressed with Siha's chances of living through it.


	25. Chapter 25

25.

Deep in the astringent guts of the US Embassy, Chief 'Ed' Jameson loomed over the secretary that handled the messaging service. "Well, check again."

The young secretary flapped his hands, expression frustrated and sweating under both Ed's hot glower and the government-quality air conditioning. Pit stains marked the shirt under his maroon sweater-vest; the daily 'Badge of Cambodia.' "I've gone through them three times, sir. There's no message from an A - A..." He paused and looked at the sheet Jameson had shoved in his face, ultimately giving up on the first name. "Agent Pendergast."

"Every day he calls in, like goddamn clockwork, and there's no message anywhere in the system today or yesterday." The chief ran a hand over his face, getting angrier out of sheer reflex.

"Nooope." The secretary shrugged. "Did you try calling the hotel he's at?"

Ed straightened and scowled down at the man. "Of course not, you silly little fuck. I got a long-term security gig from turning in a bunch of cereal box tops and asking _real_ nice." He puffed out his breath, inhaled again. He pinched the bridge of his wide nose and tried to calm himself down. "Sorry. You didn't need the full buckshot load of sarcasm there. Man hasn't been back in almost forty-eight."

The secretary made a non-committal sound. If he was used to being the embassy punching bag, it didn't mean he was going to pretend to like it. "Anyone see him leave there, maybe?"

Ed dropped his hand from his face, tapped it on the man's desk. "Naw." He shook his head, trying to think while staring over the secretary's head. "Naw, he made his rounds with a couple folks and then went off to do his thing. If he didn't want to get noticed, he probably didn't. Shit."

"So maybe he's just busy."

He shook his head again. "I don't buy that. Doesn't feel right. Dude's weird, but he's not going to make my day hell unless he has to." _Maybe he had to_. He buried the worry behind the bigger ball of anger.

"Ed!" Feet began to pound down the hall behind him and the chief turned around to see Glenn Bailey, the attache. He slowed as the big man caught his eye, panting. "Ed! Jesus." He gestured the man towards him. "I got a real problem."

"They're going around today, two for one special." Ed jutted his chin towards the man and crossed his arms, waiting for it. "What's going on?"

"My office's been getting rifled."

"Yeah, you mentioned shit's been out of place once or twice." Ed shrugged. "Camera's on usual times. Nobody in there except your assistant, you yell at him for messing with your stuff?"

Glenn glowered, bending over and huffing. "No, Ed. Here's the thing - my assistant doesn't know the password to my system, except for the part where apparently he _fucking does_."

Jameson ran a dark hand across salt and pepper hair, feeling another hot flash of irritation. Ed's problem was genuine. The day was shaping up to be just _terrific_. "Glenn, I'm genuinely sympathetic and that is a major breach. I will happily help you beat the shit out of the kid and can him back to the States ASAP, but I kind of got a problem I'm chasing down here."

"No fucking shit." He raised a finger. "I told you that FBI guy was trouble." Ed sighed, but Glenn ran right over it. "I'm not really gonna play it like 'I told you so,' I promise. My asshole assistant? Reading my phone records and the file the feds let me glance at. Four days ago. I just now noticed it while checking my access history."

That got Ed's attention. The worry came back, replacing annoyance with its escalating sense that something had gone very wrong for Pendergast. "He make any calls out?"

"No, but I called down to the gate guard already. He went out on lunch break that day, like right after." He inhaled hard and straightened up, his heart rate getting back down to something like a sane level. "Kid never goes out on lunch. If he doesn't get Wonder Bread on his sandwich, he shrivels or something."

Ed pushed away from the secretary's desk. "He in right now?" An affirmative nod. "Alright, let's go talk to him. And, hey, Glenn?" He put a dark, beefy hand on the attache's arm. "How easy was it for the kid? Did you change the passwords on your system two weeks ago, like I told you?"

Glenn reddened again.

"Goddammit, man, you don't shut up about your dog." Ed rolled his eyes and led him deeper into the building.

. . .

Glenn's assistant rolled over and showed his belly within minutes. He quivered in a cushioned chair, backed into the corner of his little cubicle and rapid-fired his way through Ed's searing look.

"Okay, look – I – I – shit. Listen. Okay. I'm _really, really sorry_. I just. I made some friends in the city and things got a little weird a while ago and they said, look, just keep an eye out for certain shit and we'll call it good and I kinda told them that the Embassy was _freaking out_ because we got some women kidnapped and turned up dead and there would be all this investigation. And nobody cared because our official investigation would knot up with the locals and they told me that the local cops don't care and, well, that was gonna be the end of it. It'd go nowhere and there'd just be the depressing paperwork for the families and that, I mean, that was absolutely going to suck. I'm really, really sorry they're dead. I didn't have _anything_ to do with that, I _swear to God_." The kid inhaled and then resumed shotgunning.

"Except the FBI comes and it's just that _one dude_ and I told these guys I knew and they were all like 'the hell?' and the creepy-looking fed fucks off and who knows what is going on except Mr. Bailey is pissed and my friends are like 'you better find out what's going on.' So I looked, because things got _weird_ and Jesus, you can't tell my girlfriend, alright?"

Ed avowed he would not tell the girlfriend, while mentally drawing up exactly how he was going to tell the girlfriend. In his professional estimation, Glenn's young assistant had gone from being a twerp to likely being a twerp with at least five unique STDs and some kinks that should probably come with a warning label.

"So I-I-I looked at the computer – I'm _so sorry_ , sir!" This was yelped past the chief, bouncing off Glenn Bailey without any acknowledgment outside a steady glare. "And I _promise_ all I told those guys was that he was a weird cop that people didn't like even though he clears his cases all the time and he had some military experience. Like, there was barely anything there, so there wasn't anything I could tell. And what he looked like. And what hotel he was at."

"Anything else?"

"Uh." The kid began to rack his memory. "No? I think. I'm really sorry. Can I go home, please?"

Ed stopped leaning against the side of the cubicle. He glanced at Glenn, red-faced and sweating in the doorway. "No, you cannot go home. You are not only shit-canned from your job, you are in trouble in ways you will eventually feel right down to your balls. One," he stuck up a thumb, ready to follow with the rest of his hand. "You fucked with a federal investigation. Two, you accessed a government computer without authorization. Three, you gave what you found to some assholes outside the US government. Four, your friends are freaky little murdering fucks that did weird shit to women, or are at least friends with those fucks. Five, Special Agent Pendergast is now missing, and if I don't find him _alive and fucking well_ , it's on your tally sheet." He watched the kid begin to wilt with grim satisfaction. "You are under arrest. You are going to sit in a quiet little room and think about all the ways your life is completely fucked." He tugged at his own shirt by way of emphasis. "Stand up and let's go."

. . .

The gate guard called Ed's office as he finished the first round of paperwork on his in-house arrest. Ed picked up the phone, sparing Glenn a glance as he nursed Jameson's flask of emergency whiskey. "Yeah? No, I didn't order a package. Where's the guy from? Okay, what hotel?" He straightened abruptly in his seat. The cultural attache blinked at him, startled. "Clear it and have it sent up to me."

Ed hung up and reached out to Glenn. "Gimme that. Pendergast arranged a package delivery from the hotel at some point."

"Izzat good?" Glenn hiccuped once and handed the whiskey over.

Ed looked into the now mostly-empty flask, swearing under his breath. "Dunno yet."

. . .

The package was ordinary, a thick manila envelope with solid contents. The runner from the gate nodded at the chief. "We checked it over. It's clean, nothing on the scan. Would have opened it, but it was marked specific for you. Figured if any office is gonna explode... well." He shrugged.

"Fuck your sense of humor, kid. Thanks." Ed waved the runner off and turned the package over, unsealing it. A heavy, rectangular object slid out of it. Taped to it was a card with a note written in clear, elegant script:

_In case of contingency, please assist. Thank you. ~ A.X.L.P._

Ed pulled off the card and blinked at the sleek, top of the line GPS device. He turned it on and leaned back hard in his chair. A readout gave him co-ordinates several hours west-northwest, deep in the Cardamom mountain jungles.

"You savvy motherfucker," he breathed.


	26. Chapter 26

26.

Agent Pendergast absently scratched at the subcutaneous microchip hidden in his left inner elbow, watching the sun rise higher over the rotting stone head. By noon later that day, Jameson should receive the package he'd arranged. Assuming, of course, the hotel hadn't bungled his request. He felt relatively confident that they wouldn't – one of the benefits of personally selecting a better hotel than the embassy recommended. No point in worrying meanwhile. If assistance came by evening, it would be more than welcomed.

If not, well. He had options. More than in the jungle, and he again considered the irritating ease of his capture. They'd clearly been informed of his identity and purpose, and as men born to the land, had again been granted the advantage outside amidst the open green. In the temple, amidst hard stone and easily-found weapons? The odds were evened, so long as he avoided many at once. They didn't know enough about him to realize that. Useful.

. . .

One of Siha's bandits began to stomp down the paths between the cages, stopping to peer at one of the women inside. Pendergast watched the figure huddle back against the far wall of the cage, making soft noises of denial. His eyes narrowed until the man wandered away again towards the food storage.

He came back a few minutes later, leaving dirty bowls of fruit and cold rice in front of each occupied cage. He stood for a while in front of Pendergast's, openly staring down at the tall, pale figure. The agent ignored him, pulling the bowl inside to examine its contents. The stolen mango had looked better. Pendergast shrugged a little and began to eat the crudely sliced mix of fruit anyway, glancing over to watch the girl do the same.

The man turned away from him and said something to the girl. She stiffened, refusing to look up at him and he laughed, rattling his fingernails across her cage.

It was the laugh that put a sharp hook in his ribs, a sound far too familiar and cold. Pendergast's eyes narrowed again. "Leave her alone," he said, the words flat and deceptively calm.

 _Fuck off_ \- He didn't need to know Khmer to translate the man's short, dismissive response. The man glanced over his shoulder, then went back to taunting the child. Past him, through the bars, Pendergast could see her start to tremble.

He put his still half-full bowl on the ground, carefully pushing it part way underneath the door. The man laughed again, and Pendergast hit the bowl hard on its lip, ricocheting it enough against both floor and bars to splash its contents all over the man's pant-leg.

The man turned with an offended shout, slapping at Pendergast's cage door hard enough to make it shake and spitting at him. The agent was up in a flash, his slender hand snaking out through a wide space between the bars and grabbing at the man. The man began to try and pull away but Pendergast got a grip on the ring finger of the hand that thumped his cage and snapped it in half with an audible crack.

The man fell away from the cage with a hoarse cry, the finger jutting from his hand at an unnatural angle. Pendergast slowly folded himself back down to the floor, eyes never leaving the bandit, never blinking, even as the man fled down the hall away from the cages.

. . .

"She's a whore's child." Siha's low, husky voice rattled up the hall ahead of the man himself. "A little talk isn't worth making enemies over." He came into view and grinned down at Pendergast. "Just talk. She's too young for our needs, too worthless. Her mother was far better use to me." Siha shrugged. "In time she'll either grow or die. We'll see which happens first. Oh, and I remind you, some of that decision is yours. For a little while longer, at least." He tapped the machete at his belt. "What is my brother's finger worth, you think?"

Pendergast's pale eyes glittered up at him. "Extraordinarily little."

Siha studied the agent's face for a moment, then hung his mouth in a silent laugh. "I like you. You will make good trophies." He knocked a scarred, thick knuckle on Pendergast's cage, watching carefully in case he moved. When he didn't, Siha nodded. "Good magic. Never met a man so white as you before. It will be hard to keep the skin like that, but necessary for many things I have planned. I'll keep the eyes, though. For myself. You see well?"

Pendergast said nothing to that.

"Mm. I think you must. You are foreign police, they have good standards in the west. Far better than here." Another quiet, heaving laugh. "I like my police better, though. They know when not to interfere with a man's business. That is your mistake. You interfere." He leaned against Pendergast's cage and jutted a thumb towards the girl, his tone amiable. "With this. With us. Jungle business. We do not want you here. You do not belong. So you will be used and all this little bit of nonsense will be over." He cracked a sleepy smile. "Later. What we do for our days needs the power of night." He straightened up. "I will have more food brought. You are a guest, the last hours must be kind. That is a rule of good sacrifice. Any questions? Any little requests? I can bring incense, for prayers."

"What's her name?" Pendergast flicked his gaze to the girl's cage as Siha straightened to go.

Siha paused to look down into his face, openly puzzled by the question. "Who the fuck cares?"

. . .

As the sun began to make its final slouch towards the horizon, he heard the footsteps of the man currently designated to watch the cells begin to approach. Something metal clanked with him, and Pendergast rose smoothly to his bare feet. Waiting for the chance of cavalry rescue had become a dead plan with the departure of Siha earlier; the agent was likely going to have to make his move much sooner than expected.

He glanced at the lock on his door, then across the hall at the girl. She looked back at him, openly afraid. It was plain she'd watched the guard approach the cells before in just this way – with slow deliberation and chains in his hands. In her eyes, he found confirmation that the guard was coming to shackle him for his upcoming murder. He nodded to the girl. "Don't look," he whispered. She shook her head, not understanding. Pendergast lifted his hand and placed it across his own eyes for a second, repeating himself.

Now her whole body shook, lip quivering. But she mimicked him; both small hands came up and covered her own face. The palms were centered over each eye. He nodded again, mostly for himself, and waited for the guard to come into view.

. . .

The guard never looked up, uninterested in the prisoner and confident in the power of the gun in one hand and the steel chains in the other. He let the chains slide back to his elbow, rooting around in his pocket for the cage keys while he stood well back from the doors – he'd already heard the tale of the broken finger and didn't regard himself as stupid as his friend. Nonetheless, the door fell half open before his head jerked up to realize what was going on. "Hey!" he managed.

The metal padlock smashed up into his nose, and the guard reflexively dropped his gun in pain. It clattered to the stone floor, immediately forgotten. He raised his hands to his bloody face and opened his mouth to shout. Pendergast grabbed him around the throat, effectively halting the scream by turning it into a dwindling, choking gargle. With a swift tug, he dragged the guard into the cage to snap his neck. The body dropped heavily to the ground and Pendergast stepped out, retrieving the gun and glancing around for any new and immediate threats. There were none, so he moved to the next pressing issue. The women he could do little for yet, but the girl could be helped now by being moved to a safer position. He would not forget the others. He would leave no one behind in a cage longer than unavoidably necessary.

He did not allow himself time to consider his instinctively adamant position on that point.

The little girl was gasping with increased fright, but she still wasn't looking. Good. Certainly she had seen enough already. He swung the door to his cage until it was close to closed again – dead, limp feet sticking out through the gap - and shoved the weapon into his waistband. A few seconds later, he had the girl's cage open. He paused to consider his plans for a moment, looking down at her before easily picking her up and carrying her out.


	27. Chapter 27

27.

Pendergast moved quickly, avoiding the few patrollers that were not called to Siha's ritual. He left the girl in a hidden nest of roots and rubble on the other side of a shattered piece of wall that lined the exterior of the compound, one of the many ignored nooks he'd noted the night before. It would be safe for at least a while, no matter what he caused inside the complex. He tapped the ground, indicating to the child as clearly as he could to stay inside the tiny 'cave' and ignoring the frank look of terror she gave him. _Stay_ , he tapped again, and she nodded hard, tugging her legs inside the little space and going very still.

A similar plan wouldn't work for the other prisoners. He doubted many of them could move on their own more than a few feet and carrying them would leave them all defenseless. The best option would be to simply wait for help and hope that any crossfire didn't reach them. It was not a preferred option, but he would have to live with it until another opportunity presented itself.

He crossed back through the prison area, listening to chants beginning to rise from the ritual space to the east. Most of the men would be there; open conflict in the space would be problematic. The gun he'd taken from the guard had a full clip – he double-checked as he moved, popping out the magazine to count fifteen rounds, then snapped it back into place with a quiet click. Not enough to clear out the place, and the first shot he took would likely bring everyone to him. That made the weapon temporarily useless and it wasn't going to be much longer before someone else came to look for the late guard and the missing prisoners.

. . .

Near the start of the ruined hallway, Pendergast heard a rustle of movement approaching and he slipped into a growing pool of deep shadow not far from the hallway's gap. Two of Siha's brigands to look for the one. His lips narrowed and he pressed further against the broken walls as they entered the prison space. One of them immediately spotted the limp legs of their compatriot pulled inside the agent's former cage and ran closer to the body. The other stepped backwards towards the hallway, hand at a knife on his hip. That put him within arm's reach.

Pendergast pushed forward lightning quick, wrapping around the bandit's face tightly enough to bury the mouth in his upper arm. When the man reflexively struggled up against his grip with both hands, he slid the long knife out of its sheath. He squeezed harder, dragging the man away from the open hallway and putting some ruined architecture between himself and the other bandit. His captive continued to fight, blows rapidly weakening as he lost oxygen.

The other bandit caught the faint sounds of the struggle and jerked back upright, turning to see his friend's failing struggle. Pendergast grimaced and used a piece of standing rubble to crack the half-conscious man in his grip hard across the brow, dropping him. He then stepped back, swapping the knife between his hands and waiting to see what the remaining bandit would do.

To his grim satisfaction, the remaining bandit was not a wise man. In teeth-bared fury, he pulled a knife from his own belt and charged the agent. Pendergast's height and reach gave him an easy advantage and he sidestepped the charge with a quick, graceful turn. The bandit stopped himself and whirled back, knife rising high for another try.

Pendergast grabbed the raised wrist and drove his own borrowed knife down into the man's armpit, gauging the length of the narrow blade just long enough to deflate a lung through the ribcage, slice a major artery or two and, if he'd gotten the angle exactly right, barely pierce the heart. Regardless of the variables, he got the effect he wanted. The bandit choked on a mouthful of blood a few seconds later and fell to his knees, out of the fight for all time.

. . .

Agent Pendergast stepped over the body of the dead man and checked the other – he wouldn't be waking anytime soon, and when he did, there was a likelihood of severe concussion or brain damage. His fate would be up to the jungle or the authorities. Good enough; no need to waste either the time or mercy he didn't have on a _coup de grâce_. Other men would live or die depending entirely on how they came at him. The situation was more than self defense; as Siha's ideals were born of the remnants of the Rouge and had been operating without any interference, he regarded it frankly as open combat. He did not permit himself to stop and consider any personal bias. Survival first. Introspection later.

He traded his bloody knife for the dead man's clean one and tugged free a sheath for it. Then he slipped quickly through one of the corridors towards Siha's private room.

. . .

The ruined statues were still in place, unmoved and unmoving while the guard's chair sat empty. Pendergast slid along the walls anyway, avoiding open space as a matter of safety and instinct. He used the knife to part the heavy linen curtains, carefully peering inside the dark room until he was certain it was empty. Then he went in, slipping between the dangling strands of beads.

Siha's quarters were sparse but clean, the smell of mossy jungle buried in a sharp, dry incense smell that filled the room instead. He kept a neat military cot and a desk sat nearby, covered with books. Pendergast tapped a few of them with the knife to examine the titles with little surprise – a nearly untouched edition of The _Golden Bough_ , old copies of the Upanishads and Vedas, handwritten journals in what was likely Siha's own sprawling, clumsy script. He opened one of those for a glance, saw crude diagrams of _yantra_ and a confused sketch of a human body marked like a butcher's map. Siha both thought and presented himself as far more educated and clever than he actually was; the butcher's map a grab-bag of vaguely understood connections between body and symbolism. The better texts were barely cracked.

The Rouge had killed the elite first, he recalled. The socially powerful, the intelligent, the educated, the unlucky. Eventually, countless people were dragged from cities and left to die in fields one way or another. Leaving the broken behind to be forgotten. Leaving behind the pretenders. The profiteers. And the killers. Like Siha.

He pulled the blanket off the cot and flung the journals onto it, along with a few grabbed handfuls of spare clothes. They would make good kindling for what he had in mind. The rest of the books and clothing he knocked roughly along the ground throughout the room, making sure at least a couple of them fell near the doorway.

As he slipped back out with the bundled blanket in hand, he tugged the cheap little lighter from his pocket and set the linen curtains ablaze. The fire should catch on the books and roar through the room, destroying the man's few other belongings. The smoke would bring some of the core group to investigate within minutes, by which time he'd be well away in another part of the temple, setting another fire to distract and split the group.

. . .

Along the way to the southern edge of the temple, Pendergast also set off a wadded mess of briquets and old, dried wood in the kitchen area, stealing another piece of mango while he piled up bags of dry rice around the metal stove. The wet stone and thick air meant little chance of any of the fires spreading out of control, but each one would have to be checked for lost supplies. A kitchen fire would badly dent Siha's food stores and cause a frenzy – not that the men realized yet that their long-term future was rapidly shortening.

. . .

The fire at the southern wall of the temple was the last major one he planned on setting. He wadded the stolen fabric and paper along a blown down tree inside the temple walls, eyeing the roots carefully in case this one would flare up beyond the boundaries. The odds looked decently in his favor in that regard, but the synthetic fabric of the blanket didn't want to catch the weakening flame of the lighter. The paper would possibly burn too quickly for the rest to catch. He found his small pouch of charcoal tablets and smoldered them, one by one, to hold and catch the flame long enough for the blanket and old clothes to light up. By the time he was done and the last bonfire building up to a full, roaring blaze, shouting had begun to filter throughout the temple. He tossed the lighter aside and pulled the gun, fifteen precious shots that would have to last him until either luck tossed him another firearm or Siha's men gave up against him.

He had no doubts he would get his own weapon back. Eventually.


	28. Chapter 28

28.

"Sir!" Ed looked up from the ruins of a cooking fire to see the kid – Jackson, an active-duty army brat under his security command – gesturing at him from across the small camp and its handful of metal shacks. The kid liked to drink hard, but he was stone sober as the evening grew dark. Kid had oddly been staying sober since being the one to ID Bellani almost two weeks ago. Jameson marked it as a major upgrade. Jackson was a good soldier when he wasn't puking up his toenails after three beers too many. The other kid he'd brought stayed at Ed Jameson's back, a rifle held in easy readiness. "Got smoke, about five to ten clicks ahead and up the jungle slopes, sir. Multi-source, but grouped area. Looks like trees and shit from here, could be a structure in the mess. Can't be sure from here. Same direction your GPS is saying, though."

Ed stood up and brushed his hands off on the jungle-camo pants he wore. The fire was old; burned out for at least a day and tamped down by two or three different sets of boots. The camp was abandoned when he and his two soldiers arrived, tracks leading into a couple different paths that burrowed deep into the surrounding jungle. The GPS gave him a guide, but it couldn't navigate shitty switchbacks and sharp drop-offs for him. He wasn't the young soldier he used to be, either, which didn't help in the boggiest of the wet undergrowth. "You got a guess on which path goes that way?"

Jackson nodded, gestured up a path that seemed to curve further east than it would north. "Think that's going to pitch up the slope in less than a kilo. Should get us close to there. I think. You think the three of us is enough for this shit, sir?"

"If Agent Pendergast is still alive up there?" He shrugged, considered the little he knew of what had become of the soldier he remembered. "Yeah, likely. Can get a chopper in close within twenty if we need."

Meanwhile, further backup courtesy of Phnom Penh's law enforcement waited at jungle's edge, examining an abandoned and hot-wired car with some confusion. They were deferring to the Americans after several hours of polite but firm conversation from the ambassador in residence with local authorities, which was going to cost Jameson a lot in the way of accrued favors. That was alright; he had a lot of favors banked over the years. If he'd pegged the situation right, it'd be worth every one used.

. . .

Four men ran to investigate the roaring fire along the southern wall of the temple; two of them armed with shoddy rifles that had probably seen service longer than the men themselves had been alive. The other two held machetes and took point. Pendergast considered the problem for a moment, then positioned himself carefully against a jutting piece of wall and took his shots. The riflemen fell and he stepped out into the open to aim directly at the face of the nearer man, who turned instinctively at the sound.

The machete dropped from its ready position and the man backed up, startled not by the sounds but by the ghostly figure all in black with his outline ringed by fire. Pendergast's finger paused on the gun's trigger as the man's expression changed into outright terror and he slammed into and over his partner to flee. The other man, now downed onto his back, scuttled away from the agent as quickly as possible. His black, clean boots dragged along the stones, slightly too big for the bandit's feet. Pendergast bared his teeth in a mirthless, sharklike smile at the remaining man and advanced on him with a few quick steps.

Siha's soldier shot to his feet and nearly overbalanced himself, then was shoved back down with a yelp. He tried to roll away, landing on his stomach in the start of a desperate crawl. Pendergast picked up one of the dropped rifles and cracked him over the head with the butt, looking him over again once the man was out. Yes, those were in fact his boots. He tugged them off the prone figure, tying the laces together to better carry them for a short while. Then he worked quickly to break down the rifles – he judged them as little more than rubbish, with too much chance to be unreliable at just the wrong moment, but simply leaving them would be unwise. Shouts began to drift closer, drawn by the gunfire. He slipped away past the fire and dodged through broken walls to avoid the next knot of bandits, tossing away the unusable ammo clips deep into the surrounding jungle.

. . .

Siha sat cross-legged before his empty altar, sharpening his machete with a slick stone. He worked the tool mechanically down the already fine edge of the blade, ignoring the crackling of the distant fires and the sound of gunfire. His face was that of a man at perfect peace with his place in the world, never changing expression even after one of his soldiers told him of the near-total destruction of his own private room.

It didn't matter. Fire purified. Clearly the long-nosed white cop understood that simple truth of the universe. Siha had misjudged the man's capability to understand his work; mistaken his quiet dislike for blindness. He did see through those strange pale eyes, and see very well indeed. It was a shame that the policeman's essential nature made him an enemy – much like the Garuda against Siha's ancestral kingdom, damned to the slavery of dead gods and condemned eater of snakes. Siha considered the legend for a little while, spared a thought of dislike for surely-dead Indra who had promised the naga as wasted _food_ for the creature.

But there were no more gods in Cambodia. Siha had seen them all die as a young soldier during the old regime, burned his family's own little shrine himself and left behind the bones for guardian ghosts. He had watched as the gods fell from the sky in later years, not screaming, only dying quietly in the fields and smashed apart against the trees. Barely a fight given. They had gone away to make room for the new thing he could bring, dragging this _yuga_ to its bitter end. That would be the legacy of the failed Rouge he had once served. The return of his people. New power born in the corpses of old.

Siha understood more clearly now. The ghost eyes of the pale man were more than a fine trophy. They were _essential_ to his needs. They could see what he himself could not – the way to purge his newborn kingdom's final weaknesses. Years of sacrificing the women upon his healing altar had given up all the primal power he had demanded and brought him the white man as a final gift. Born from the dead Buddhas Siha had left in his wake, the great bird had brought himself to be destroyed.

He smiled and put away the machete, letting the sharpening stone fall away from his hands. He rose to his feet, balancing gracefully on the balls of his nut-brown feet. The white man would be coming for him. It was proper to welcome the sacrifice with open arms.


	29. Chapter 29

29.

Pendergast balanced carefully atop a wall not far from the center of the temple, well within the massive, shadowed lee of a surrounding _tung_ tree. He tracked a knot of Siha's men as they found the bodies of their compatriots, watched several of them cut and run away to the northern entrance and disappear. Perhaps eight soldiers or less remained in the temple by his reckoning, most of them that he'd seen now nervous-looking but trying to remain steadfast. And, of course, Siha himself somewhere near the central altar. Some kingdom, he thought with bitter sardonicism as he put his boots back on.

The imprisoned women remained untouched, forgotten in the still-roiling chaos while the little girl remained hidden in her cave. He'd snuck by on his way to his perch and seen her huddled far in the back, not looking out. A fleeting memory tried to make its way into his thoughts; the face of a terrified young soldier long since ready to die, afraid more of the man trying to help him than of the Khmer. He let it go, forced it to go with little reflection. The situation was not the same. The consideration was a waste of time.

While slipping down carefully from his perch, he checked the clip of the gun. Still thirteen bullets left. Likely more than enough for his remaining needs.

. . .

"We're getting close, sir." Private Jackson jutted his chin towards a thick wall of green, turning back to give Thelonius 'Ed' Jameson a flashing grin. "Your GPS is saying half a click, and there's some shit going down up there. Your guy good at freaking people out or something?"

"Or something." Ed shot him a return look, unamused. "Your ears are better than mine these days, kid. What'cha got?"

"Screams. Probably do just fine following 'em the rest of the way."

. . .

Of the eight rogue troops left in the temple, two more fell. One bullet each. Their compatriot turned and ran from the wraith wrapped in filthy black and its unreadable, blazing face. The five were then split throughout the ruined temple. Pendergast found one alone, easily broke the man's arm when he charged with his machete and left him sobbing in fright and pain.

Four left.

Another pair ran for the entrance when they got a good look at him coming around a corner. He wondered to himself, distantly and with only slight interest in the question, what they thought they saw.

Two. They hid in the temple somewhere. Perhaps they had given up. That suited the agent just fine.

The altar space was ahead. He lingered in the shadows of its archway, watching Siha with his sheathed machete and Pendergast's own gun, who watched him back.

. . .

Siha smiled and spread one arm wide, the other hand on the stolen .45 in the waist of his old black pants. "You are here, as fate demands. You-"

Pendergast shot him once in the left knee and watched him crumple in shock against his ruined altar. Blood spread quickly down the pant leg, dampening it down against the calf. "I'm so very sorry, it's quite rude of me to interrupt. Were you going to monologue?" He stalked forward cat-quick to loom over the fallen man. "I'm sure it was all very interesting. To you, at least." He reached down and plucked his weapon from Siha's belt, smacking away the arm that rose to fight him off.

"No, I-" Siha's voice clicked in his throat, feeling his power drain with his blood and replaced by sudden fear. The man was ghastly, his towering outline lost against the moonless night. The eyes reflected nothing as they stared down at him.

_The eyes!_

Pendergast put his borrowed, more compact gun away and inspected his own. The M1911 was still in fine condition, unused since its theft. He arched a pale eyebrow at Siha, then snapped the safety off as he lifted the weapon to point it at the would-be bandit king's face. He stepped back once for range, suddenly cold all over with well-remembered hate.

"My kingdom!" came a rasping, pathetic wail. "The _devas_ are gone!"

A pale finger curled around the trigger. Waiting. One second. Then another.

. . .

"Pendergast!" Jameson double-checked his six, making sure Jackson had the two bandits thoroughly hog-tied. Three more had been caught just outside the temple limits and they remained there under the watchful eye of Ed's other soldier. He shouted the agent's name again. "Place is a fucking maze, where are you?" He swore under his breath and shook his head. He was hesitant to go deeper in without backup; he had no guarantees yet that the situation was stable.

"Might be downed, sir. Looks like there was a hell of a row around the joint."

 _Didn't ask you, kid_. Ed bit off the words before they could leave his mouth. Kid had at least one point – several dead bodies found so far, a handful of terrified Cambodian bandits in custody, and a bunch of fires cooking the temple stones black as they wound their thick smoke towards the sky. It had indeed been a hell of a row out there in the middle of nowhere.

Ed spotted movement out of the corner of his eye and swung on it, Glock down and ready. Jackson saw him move, brought his own rifle up and dropped back for the cover of some of the ancient rubble. One of the bandits whimpered softly and tried to scoot away from the far arch.

"The courtyard beyond the entrance is just wide enough for an evacuation helicopter, Officer Jameson." The voice from the shadow was calm, pale eyes blinking once in a dirty face and the head tilted slightly in a courtly greeting that verged on the absurd under the circumstances. Ed lowered his gun the rest of the way, sighing at the sight of him. "Three women, extreme exhaustion and abuse, probable starvation complications. One juvenile, also female."

Jameson looked the agent over, expression growing serious. "You need a medic?"

"I do not." Pendergast slipped away again before Ed could counter that, in his professional estimation, the man looked like shit. His sleek black tracker's clothes had been coated with grime and plant debris, the white-blond hair caked into a wild snarl by mud and sweat. He didn't seem to be obviously bleeding despite what was probably someone else's blood on his knuckles and fingernails, but Ed didn't like the look on the man's face. For a change, it was almost readable – and what was there was very cold.

Ed shot Jackson a warning look before the kid could say something smart-assed, readied his Glock again on pure instinct when the shadow reappeared. "Fu-" he started, cutting his startled word off at the sight of the skinny little girl Pendergast carried. "Stop doing that," he snapped instead, flushing to a deeper shade under his dark cheeks.

Pendergast gave him a blank look, not comprehending what Ed's problem was. "The ringleader is well-contained but slightly... damaged, I'm afraid. I can verify he is behind your cycle of murders." He set the girl down on her feet and nudged her towards the soldiers. She moved close to Jameson, her tiny hands knotted together and looking back at the agent with a quick, frightened glance. Jameson reached out in an automatic reaction, put a wide hand on the kid's head to try and soothe her. A brief look of bemusement crossed Pendergast's face. "I have him restrained close by."

"Damaged?"

"Shot. Once. Non-fatal injury to left lower extremity." A brief smile crossed his face. It didn't reach the eyes. "Though it's quite easy to sustain a dangerous infection in the jungle."

Ed suppressed a faint shudder. The agent sounded far too pleased with the possibility. It struck him to wonder vaguely how the ringleader was still alive.

Pendergast watched the chief's expression change with its unasked questions, choosing to take mercy and answer them anyway. "He's mad and stupid, and ultimately very uninteresting. Hardly worth the extra paperwork I'm sure we've already accrued. Just another wreck from decades long past. A ghost under a porch." He lifted his shoulders in a light, dismissive shrug, then turned away to refuse further inquiry. "Shall I lead you to the prison? Your assistance can radio for the flight."

"One second." Ed holstered his gun and gently grasped the kid's shoulders with both hands. He leaned down very slightly. " _Naek chmuah ey?" What's your name?_

She searched his face with a deadly serious expression, the fear lessening the further she was away from the temple center – and from Pendergast. "Darasy."

"Okay, kiddo." He patted the head again, pointed her towards Jackson. "It's all over. You're safe. We'll getcha a place to stay."

Pendergast lifted a slender hand to beckon him down the ruined hallways, guiding Ed Jameson on a final grim tour of one of Cambodia's hidden nightmares.


	30. Epilogue: Samsara

Senator Deustch looked through the glass window of the hospital door, unsure of what he would do or say to the wisp of a man on the other side when he opened it. The smell of astringents and clean cotton filled his nose, the undercurrents of pain and sorrow that filled every hall of Walter Reed Army Medical Center not well hidden. He knew the smells very well from a hundred visits to meet another family's wounded veterans, meetings that typically ended in tears and handshakes. He knew them from being allowed to view his son not long ago, deep in the cold morgue where the doctors kept the honored dead.

A nauseated flutter filled his stomach at the memory, the sight of his son's brutally thin, waxy face filling his mind. At least he was permitted to see Dylan one last time before burial. The 'benefit' of his place on a top level Armed Services Committee; the gift of top secret clearance. Most families with children in Special Forces might never know what happened if they were lost in the field. Deustch knew. Because of the man sitting stone-still on a bed on the other side of the door, with eyes that seemed to look through everything. The last survivor.

The senator took a sharp inhale and let himself in.

. . .

Ed Jameson finished his climb up the steep brown steps of Wat Phnom, deep in the center of the city. He arched a thick eyebrow at the sight of Agent Pendergast seated quietly on a bench near one of the white stone nagas, the man a stark contrast in the crisp black suit with his hands clasped together on his lap. He didn't seem to be looking at the statue, nor much of anything, really. The pale blue gaze drifted east, perhaps towards where the three rivers met.

"I thought to look for one of the Irrawaddy dolphins before I left, but I understand it's very rare now to see one." The soft drawl carried towards Ed on a stray, cooling breeze. "A shame."

"The ambassador wanted to see you before you left," Ed said by way of response. "She's extremely grateful for the FBI's professional assistance and blah, blah, blah. Get a few words from you before Siha – real name Pramook Muy; past history, some minor Khmer Rouge shithead – gets a private trial."

"I would prefer not to."

Ed rolled his eyes. "Sure, Bartleby." His reply drew the fleeting wisp of a real smile. "She knows the score, Pendergast. She's down with what happened, to as much extent as she can ethically accept it. I filled her in. Personal line follows the public. Bellani was a friend."

"You've been together long?" A slender hand rose to wave off his own question. "Ignore that. It's absolutely none of my business."

Ed shrugged, putting his hands in his pockets. "A while. Few years. Probably going to get stuck with the dishes for the next decade for making her play clean up with the Bureau. Told you I'd deal with the shit end of the stick."

"Mhm." Pendergast's gaze came around to him for a long moment, then slid away again. "A costly endeavor."

"Yeah, well." Ed took an accompanying bench. "Still felt like a way to hit unfinished business." He glanced over, sensing the other man's suddenly chilly presence rise to fill the open space.

. . .

Senator Deustch fumbled for words as he stood framed in the hospital doorway, feeling a sudden rush of shame. He was a politician, words were his goddamned _job_. He clenched his hand on the doorknob, all of his fingers turning cold and numb against the metal and he grasped at the first thing that came to mind. "I wanted to say 'thank you,' sir." His voice faltered on the last word, suddenly aware how trite it all tasted in his mouth.

The ghostly figure on the bed didn't acknowledge his voice. He didn't even move. For a long, strange moment Deustch wondered if the man had died after all. A sudden swell of grief hit him, making him sag against the door. "I got to see my son again. I don't... I don't fully understand what you went through out there. What killed my son. Your team." He cleared his throat, mostly to try and fill the silence that drained the room of life. "I read the report you filed with the Army."

"I believe you may be the only one." The voice was raspy and hollow. Sergeant Pendergast remained unmoving otherwise, unblinking eyes staring at nothing.

"No, I..." His voice trailed off. What could he realistically say? Several other members of the committee dismissed the man's clinical, horrifyingly detailed intelligence report as a crock at worst, a statistical outlier at best. They wanted it buried, and buried down deep. Cambodia was one of the country's best allies in the still-unstable Pacific region and men like Dole and Helms wanted to keep it that way.

But the others hadn't seen Deustch's son. "I believe you." He inhaled. "I owe you anything I can. I'm sorry. Anything you need after this. Anything I can do for you in DC. I got to see my boy again. That's worth more to me than I can explain."

Something flickered in the frozen silver stare and the too-thin face turned very slightly to regard him. A ghost of sorrow passed across the pale features and was gone again before Deustch could be sure he saw it. "He survived well, Senator," came the rasp again at last. "He fought the best he could. To the very end."

Deustch seemed to grasp at the words with something like relief, never doubting what the other man knew was one final, gentle lie. Somewhere in a dark hole within himself, Pendergast had found enough mercy to give the man that much.

. . .

"Don't talk to me any further about your grief or your burdens. Do me that respect, Officer Jameson." The voice had gone dead and Pendergast's head had turned to regard him with a narrow, unforgiving stare. "Do me that _kindness._ "

"I only meant-"

"I know." Pendergast cut him off with a curt gesture. "I realize that you felt responsible, after the fall of my team. That you feel somehow at fault or at blame."

Ed struggled to find a path through the conversation that wouldn't lead to further quiet fury. "I couldn't do anything then. Command wouldn't authorize search and rescue, even after ops verified the last transmissions from Golovchenko. I read the report you filed after the fact."

"So there's two." Pendergast didn't seem about to clarify the apparent non-sequitur. "It's interesting. They think handing out fistfuls of medals shuts one up and sends them away with their hat in their hand. It was hardly necessary; the _silence_ was perfectly effective and I wasn't much for pursing the matter regardless. It matters no longer, Thelonius. It's the past. Washington said their part. The laughable trials after the Rouge fell said the rest."

"It sure as fuck didn't look like the dead past out there, Pendergast. It looked like you up and went to fucking war." Ed suddenly leaned back as if ducking out of firing range, mentally cussing himself out for the jab.

"I do my job as I will, and what needs will be accomplished. Do you suddenly now have issue with my method?" More dead ice.

Ed rolled his eyes at himself and passed a hand down over his own face. _Dear Jesus, bless this fuckup brother with the runaway blowhole_. "No, that is in fact all on me and I knew likely what we were getting into when I had you called."

"Enough, then." The voice gentled very slightly. Ed looked up to see the agent looking away again. "Let it be enough."

Ed spread his hands, at a loss to do anything except say what he was sure would anger Pendergast further. "I _can't._ "

. . .

Sergeant Pendergast watched the senator leave with his shoulders hunched over like a very old man. There was nothing more to say. Pendergast wanted no handshake, no teary, uselessly emotional farewells. He wanted only to be left alone in the quiet, where there were no screams, no concerns about where the next meal came from, no more suffering given without reason.

The doctors were very distant men, if gentle enough. They were overwhelmed with still hundreds to thousands of others shattered from Vietnam. They fed him medication for the pain they were sure he constantly suffered, gave him a therapist that seemed to make all the right noises in the right places, but he believed it actually did very little. He was afraid he would leave still wanting the pills. Other soldiers did. He would try to refuse the medication from here. Try to sleep without help.

The senator's offer was sincere and he numbly filed it away in his mind. Someday soon he would be out of the hospital and he would have decisions to make. The Army had already left not so subtle noises that they wanted him out of the service, so there was that avenue decided for him. He was quite sure it would be all very honorable; thank you for your dedicated service, here's a set of good references and a polite ceremony that will be thoroughly redacted in your file along with every other thing you ever did for us, do write your former superiors at holiday. He no longer cared. It was past.

First he would go home, for good or ill. Decisions would be necessary. They didn't have to be prompt. He had all the time in the world, if he so chose. He was free. Control would not be taken from him ever again. No matter what he chose from here, he had that much.

. . .

"You can," Agent Pendergast replied, merciless. He refused to look again at Ed. "You do this solely to yourself. Take a therapist, they've gotten better in the last decade as I'm to understand. _It isn't yours to bear._ "

"Pendergast." Ed closed his mouth again, stuck.

"What? What is it you think you'd like to hear? Do you wish it had been you instead?" A short, brittle laugh. "No. You do not. If you read the report, you know far better than that." He bent forward slightly, steepling his fingers in front of him with elbows on his knees and studying the crackling stone under his black shoes. "What do you want? Is it forgiveness?"

Ed exhaled, unable to give a good answer. He suddenly realized that all he had for decades after ODA-531 was abruptly halved was a series of mangled questions with no answer at the end. He couldn't have what he wanted. He didn't know what he wanted.

The agent broke into his thoughts. "I'm not your priest."

"I know. I'm sorry, man. I shouldn't be riding you on this shit." He shrugged. "I don't know what I want. I'm just... incredibly fucking sorry and I know that's incredibly fucking trite to say. And I never got to say it. Not to anyone. I never got to see Tuck again, or the rest of the kids. And you up and vanished for a long, long time."

A long time passed, broken at last by a slow nod.

"You survived. That's a hell of a thing. I've seen the fields. They took me up to Choeung Ek not long after Vietnam started to really pull shit together. One of their guys was starting the museum there. And I found out there were photographs of fucking everything. Like, how could anyone doubt what happened? But there it was. All that doubt. And nobody did anything about it. That one little fuck in charge died in his own house, never uttered a word of apology. They got away with it. I have never gotten over that."

"You do. It takes effort." Pendergast was quiet again. The pale gaze flickered up. "One just... keeps moving."

Ed nodded. "How you got through, huh? Kept you together."

The agent shook his head. "No." He inhaled once, a soft rasp. "I think I understand now. You need a secret, not forgiveness." He stood up, looking down at Ed with the afternoon sun at his back and the statue of a coiling mass of snakes at his side. "I will tell you this – what I learned. And then... do not ever call me again." He raised a single finger to his lips and smiled very slightly. There was no kindness in that smile, nor enmity. It held nothing, a purely meaningless gesture. "Everyone breaks under the torturer, Thelonius. It will be different between each victim. You will not always see the damage. You cannot always know what cracked. But there's your secret."

Agent Pendergast stepped away towards the steps of Wat Phnom, the first steps that would take him down and away from Cambodia for the last time. He looked back over his shoulder at Ed Jameson and smiled again. This time it almost looked sad.

"Everyone breaks."

_~fin~_

_"These fragments I have shored against my ruins"_ ~ The Waste Land, T.S Eliot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Afterword:
> 
> Vietnam entered Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia) in December 1979. What was found remains argued, controversial, and to no small extent, beyond any given justice. The Khmer Rouge sent out missives during their reign that at worst admitted to problems with the food supply, chalked up to the adaptations the new utopic society had to struggle through. The facts are that perhaps more than two million people died under the regime, many of whom did indeed die from starvation and exhaustion in the 'collectives.' This is sometimes used to fudge the numbers and distract from the rest of the records - of which the Rouge did indeed keep astoundingly detailed records and photographs - of prisoners tortured and executed among the many prisons and killing fields. Tuol Sleng - S-21 - is the largest and most infamous. The prison and field referred to at Tlork was in fact the major facility of Svay Rieng Province. Its depiction here is fictional and contains elements of S-21. The torture methods, interrogations, and the bolting to the floor are accurate if incredibly understated depictions of the horrors Cambodians and other victims of the Rouge faced.
> 
> I recommend Facing Death in Cambodia by Peter Maguire for more information on both the haunting collection of information in the wake of the Rouge, including the interview and discovery of the man who photographed many of the prisoners that passed through Tuol Sleng. I also recommend it for being a look at another view of Jameson's hard struggle with questions with no answers. Previous to writing this book, Maguire had been a scholar of the Nuremberg trials and the contrast between the two genocides and their aftermath is striking and sad. He found no easy parallels with what happened in Cambodia. The trials given to Cambodian genocides left little dent in the legacy of the Rouge. Remnants of the Rouge itself continued with kidnappings and executions well into the 90's. The two incidents referred to in the story from 1994 (Two abductions and executions of tourists, four tourists each) are real.
> 
> Pol Pot died at home in 1998, as referenced in the story. Brother Duch (Kang Kek Lew), the real life version of the story's 'Brother Louis,' was not discovered until 1999. He is now 70, facing life imprisonment.
> 
> The current wait for military benefits through the VA system is now up to two years. The treatment of veterans at Walter Reed in the years after Vietnam deserves more attention than the brief note in the epilogue. It was not uncommon to leave addicted to painkillers, neglected, PTSD undiagnosed and dismissed, or virtually and actually forgotten. It happens today. It's not that the system is cruel or that the doctors don't care – the military system is not fully equipped to handle the real human aftermath to a war. It never has been. For all that we prepare soldiers to deal with the worst that can be found on the battlefield – the SERE program continually updating itself to both defend against and inflict what it finds – we still don't know what the hell to do with the tortured results. Pendergast's terse summary is true - most anti-torture courses such as SERE teach you that you will eventually break. It does not always teach you how to come back from that.
> 
> The statistics of sexual violence in Cambodia against women and children are adapted from a first quarter 2003 report. The situation has not vastly improved. Ketmoni Tep's organization is a real one.
> 
> This has been a work of fiction, inspired by the Agent Pendergast novels by Preston & Child. No infringement of copyright is presumed.
> 
> 07-13, MDS. Thank you for coming. Namaste.


End file.
